Skip to main content

Full text of "American Negro slavery : a survey of the supply, employment and control of Negro labor as determined by the plantation régime"

See other formats 


.V  .X 


PLEASE  NOTE 


It  has  been  necessary  to  replace  some  of  the 
original  pages  in  this  book  with  photocopy 
reproductions  because  of  damage  or 
mistreatment  by  a  previous  user. 

Replacement  of  damaged  materials  is  both 
expensive  and  time-consuming.  Please  handle 
this  volume  with  care  so  that  information  will 
not  be  lost  to  future  readers. 

Thank  you  for  helping  to  preserve  the 
University's  research  collections. 


AMERICAN 
NEGRO   SLAVERY 


** 


AMERICAN 
NEGRO  SLAVERY 


.fH: 


A  SURVEY  OF  THE  SUPPLY,  EMPLOYMENT 
AND  CONTROL  OF  NEGRO  LABOR  AS  DE- 
TERMINED BY  THE  PLANTATION  REGIME 


BY 


ULRICH  BONNELL  JHILLIPS,  Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


NEW  YORK 


LONDON 


1929 


Copyright,  1918,  by 
D.  APPLETON  AND  CX)MPANY 


11177 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO 
MY  WIFE 


k^RC       8  2   * 


PREFACE 

For  twenty  years  I  have  panned  the  sands  of  the  stream  of 
Southern  hfe  and  garnered  their  golden  treasure.  Many  of  the 
nuggets  rewarding  the  search  have  already  been  displayed  in  their 
natural  form ;  ^  and  this  now  is  a  coinage  of  the  grains  great  and 
small.  The  metal  is  pure,  the  minting  alone  may  be  faulty.  The 
die  is  the  authcy's  mind,  which  has  been  shaped  as  well  by  a  varied 
Northern  environment  in  manhood  as  by  a  Southern  one  in  youth. 
In  the  making  of  coins  and  of  histories,  however,  locality  is  of 
less  moment  than  are  native  sagacity,  technical  training  and  a 
sense  of  truth  and  proportion.  For  these  no  warrant  will  hold. 
The  product  must  stand  or  fall  by  its  own  quality. 

The  wide  ramifications  of  jnegro  slavery  are  sketched  in  these 
pages,  but  fhe  central  concern  is  with  itsjise^nature  and  influence 
iirth"e~fegion^  of  its  concentration.  In  these  the  plantation  regime 
prevailed."  The"characteristic  American  slave,  indeed,  was  not 
only  a  negro,  but  a  plantation  workman ;  and  for  the  present  pur- 
pose ajcnowledge  of  the  plans  and  requirements  of  plantation 
industry  is  no  less  vital  than  an  understanding  of  human.  natureT 
V^fle^The  laft'efTs^r  course  faTcen  for  granted,  the  former  has' 
been  elaborated  as  a  principal  theme.  Slaves  were  both  persons 
and  property,  and  as  chattels  they  were  investments.  This  phase 
has  invited  analysis  at  some  length  in  the  two  chapters  following 
those  on  the  plantation  regime. 

Ante-bellum  conditions  were  sharply  different  in  some  respects 
from  those  of  colonial  times,  largely  because  of  legislation  enacted 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  decade 
of  the  nineteenth.  For  this  reason  the  politics  of  that  period  of 
sharp  transition  are  given  attention  herein.  Otherwise  the  words 
and  deeds  of  public  men  have  been  mostly  left  aside.  Polemic 
writings  also  have  been  little  used,  for  their  fuel  went  so  much  to 

*Ulrich  B.  Phillips,  ed.,  Plantation  and  Frontier  Documents,  printed  also 
as  vols.  I  and  II  of  the  Documentary  History  of  American  Industrial  Society 
(Cleveland,  Ohio,  1909),  and  cited  in  the  present  work  as  Plantation  and 
Frontier. 


viii  PREFACE 

heat  that  their  light  upon  the  living  conditions  is  faint.  Reminis- 
cences are  likewise  disregarded,  for  the  reason  that  the  lapse  of 
decades  has  impaired  inevitably  the  memories  of  men.  The  con- 
temporary records  of  slaves,  masters  and  w^itnesses  may  leave 
gaps  and  have  their  shortcomings,  but  the  asseverations  of  politi- 
cians, pamphleteers,  and  aged  survivors  are  generally  unsafe  even 
in  supplement. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  tone  of  social  elements  in  the  Black  Belt 
of  the  present  is  something  of  a  gauge  of  the  temper  of  genera- 
tions past.  My  sojourn  in  a  National  Army  Camp  in  the  South 
vi^hile  this  book  has  been  going  through  the  press  has  reenforced 
my  earlier  conviction  that  Southern  racial  asperities  are  mainly 
superficial,  and  that  the  two  great  elements  are  fundamentally  in 
accord.  That  the  harmony  is  not  a  new  thing  is  evinced  by  the 
very  tone  of  the  camp.  The  men  of  the  two  races  are  of  course 
quartered  separately;  but  it  is  a  daily  occurrence  for  white 
Georgian  troops  to  go  to  the  negro  companies  to  seek  out  their  ac- 
customed friends  and  compare  home  news  and  experiences.  The 
negroes  themselves  show  the  s^me  easy-going,  amiable,  serio- 
comic obedience  and  the  same  personal  attachments  to  white  men, 
as  well  as  the  same  sturdy  light-heartedness  and  the  same  love  of 
laughter  and  of  rhythm,  which  distinguished  their  forbearsr'^The 
non-commissioned  officers  among  them  show  a  punctilious  pride 
of  place  which  matches  that  of  the  plantation  foremen  of  old; 
and  the  white  officers  who  succeed  best  in  the  command  of  these 
companies  reflect  the  planter's  admixture  of  tact  with  firmness  of 
control,  the  planter's  patience  of  instruction,  and  his  crisp  though 
cordial  reciprocation  of  sentiment.  The  negroes  are  not  en- 
slaved but  drafted ;  they  dwell  not  in  cabins  but  in  barracks ;  they 
shoulder  the  rifle,  not  the  hoe ;  but  the  visitor  to  their  company 
streets  in  evening  hours  enters  nevertheless  a  plantation  atmos- 
phere. A  hilarious  party  dashes  in  pursuit  of  a  fugitive,  and 
gives  him  lashes  with  a  belt  "moderately  laid  on."  When  ques- 
tioned, the  explanation  is  given  that  the  victim  is  "a  awnrooly 
nigger"  whose  ways  must  be  mended.  In  the  quiet  which  follows, 
a  throng  fills  the  quarter  with  an  old-time  unmartial  refrain : 

I  ain'  go'  study  war  no  mo', 

I  ain'  go'  study  war  no  mo', 

Study  war  no  mo'! 


PREFACE  ix 

As  the  music  pauses  there  comes  through  a  nearby  window  the 
mention  of  two  bits  as  a  wager,  and  an  earnest  adjuration  of 
"sebben  or  lebben."  The  drill  which  they  do  by  day  with  splen- 
did snap  is  wonderfully  out  of  their  minds  by  night.  The  grim 
realities  of  war,  though  a  constant  theme  in  the  inculcation  of 
discipline,  is  as  remote  in  the  thought  of  these  men  as  is  the 
planet  Mars.  Yet  each  of  their  lieutenants  is  justly  confident  that 
his  platoon  will  follow  whithersoever  he  may  lead.  It  may  be  that 
the  change  of  African  nature  by  plantation  slavery  has  been  ex- 
aggerated. At  any  rate  a  generation  of  freedom  has  wrought  less 
transformation  in  the  bulk  of  the  blacks  than  might  casually  be 
supposed. 

Some  of  the  many  debts  incurred  in  the  prosecution  of  re- 
searches leading  to  this  book  have  been  acknowledged  in  my  pre- 
vious publications,  and  others  are  indicated  In  the  footnotes  here- 
in. It  remains  to  say  that  in  stimulus  and  criticism,  as  well  as  in 
the  revision  of  proofs  while  exigent  camp  duties  have  engrossed 
my  main  attention,  my  wife  has  given  great  and  unflagging  aid. 

U.  B.  P. 

Army  Y.M.C.A., 

Camp  Gordon,  Ga. 


r 


y 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  Early  Exploitation  of  Guinea       .        .        .  i 

II.     The  Maritime   Slave  Trade 20 

III.     The  Sugar  Islands 46 

—  IV.     The  Tobacco  Colonies 67 

V.     The  Rice  Coast 85 

VI.     The  Northern  Colonies 98 

VII.     Revolution  and  Reaction 115 

VIII.     The  Closing  of  the  African  Slave  Trade    .        .  132 

IX.     The  Introduction  of  Cotton  and  Sugar  .        .        .  150 

X.     The  Westward  Movement 169 

XL     The  Domestic   Slave  Trade 187 

XII.  ^  The  Cotton  Regime 205' 

XIII.  Types  of  Large  Plantations 228 

XIV.  Plantation  Management 261 

XV.     Plantation  Labor 291 

XVI.\  Plantation  Life 309 

XVII.     Plantation  Tendencies 331 

XVIII.  *  Economic   Views   of    Slavery:    a    Survey   of    the 

Literature 344 ' 

~-XIX.     Business  Aspects  of  Slavery    .....  359*' 

XX.     Town  Slaves 402 

XXI.     Free  Negroes        . 425 

XXII.     Slave  Crime 454 

XXIII.     The  Force  of  the  Law 489 

Index 515 


/ 


AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA 

THE  Portuguese  began  exploring  the  west  coast  of  Africa 
shortly  before  Christopher  Columbus  was  born;  and  no 
sooner  did  they  encounter  negroes  than  they  began  to 
seize  and  carry  them  in  captivity  to  Lisbon.  The  court  chron- 
icler Azurara  set  himself  in  1452,  at  the  command  of  Prince 
Henry,  to  record  the  valiant  exploits  of  the  negro-catchers.  Re- 
flecting the  spirit  of  the  time,  he  praised  them  as  crusaders  bring- 
ing savage  heathen  for  conversion  to  civilization  and  Christian- 
ity. He  gently  lamented  the  massacre  and  sufferings  involved, 
but  thought  them  infinitely  outweighed  by  the  salvation  of  souls. 
This  cheerful  spirit  of  solace  was  destined  long  to  prevail 
among  white  peoples  when  contemplating  the  hardships  of  the 
colored  races.  But  Azurara  was  more  than  a  moralizing  an- 
nalist. He  acutely  observed  of  the  first  cargo  of  captives  brought 
from  southward  of  the  Sahara,  less  than  a  decade  before  his 
writing,  that  after  coming  to  Portugal  "they  never  more  tried  to 
fly,  but  rather  in  time  forgot  all  about  their  own  country,"  that 
"they  were  very  loyal  and  obedient  servants,  without  malice"; 
and  that  "after  they  began  to  use  clothing  they  were  for  the  most 
part  very  fond  of  display,  so  that  they  took  great  delight  in  robes 
of  showy  colors,  and  such  was  their  love  of  finery  that  they 
picked  up  the  rags  that  fell  from  the  coats  of  other  people  of 
the  country  and  sewed  them  on  their  own  garments,  taking  great 
pleasure  in  these,  as  though  it  were  matter  of  some  greater 
perfection."  ^     These    few    broad    strokes    would    portray    with 

^  Gomez  Eannes  de  Azurara,  Chronicle  of  the  Discovery  and  Conquest  of 
Guinea,  translated  b}'  C.  R.  Beazley  and  E.  P.  Prestage,  in  the  Hakluyt  So- 
ciety Publications^  XCV,  85. 

I 


2         AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

equally  happy  precision  a  myriad  other  black  servants  born  cen- 
turies after  the  writer's  death  and  dwelling  in  a  continent  of 
whose  existence  he  never  dreamed.  Azurara  wrote  further  that 
while  some  of  the  captives  were  not  able  to  endure  the  change 
and  died  happily  as  Christians,  the  others,  dispersed  among  Por- 
tuguese households,  so  ingratiated  themselves  that  many  were 
set  free  and  some  were  married  to  men  and  women  of  the  land 
and  acquired  comfortable  estates.  This  may  have  been  an"  ear- 
nest of  future  conditions  in  Brazil  and  the  Spanish  Indies;  but 
in  the  British  settlements  it  fell  out  far  otherwise. 

As  the  fifteenth  century  wore  on  and  fleets  explored  more  of 
the  African  coast  with  the  double  purpose  of  finding  a  passage 
to  India  and  exploiting  any  incidental  opportunities  for  gain, 
more  and  more  human  cargoes  were  brought  from  Guinea  to 
Portugal  and  Spain.  But  as  the  novelty  of  the  blacks  wore  off 
they  were  held  in  smaller  esteem  and  treated  with  less  liberality. 
Gangs  of  them  were  set  to  work  in  fields  from  which  the  Moorish 
occupants  had  recently  been  expelled.  The  labor  demand  was 
not  great,  however,  and  when  early  in  the  sixteenth  century 
West  Indian  settlers  wanted  negroes  for  their  sugar  fields,  Spain 
willingly  parted  with  some  of  hers.  Thus  did  Europe  begin 
the  coercion  of  African  assistance  in  the  conquest  of  the  Amer- 
ican wilderness. 

Guinea  comprises  an  expanse  about  a  thousand  miles  wide 
lying  behind  three  undulating  stretches  of  coast,  the  first  reach- 
ing from  Cape  Verde  southeastward  nine  hundred  miles  to  Cape 
Palmas  in  four  degrees  north  latitude,  the  second  running 
thence  almost  parallel  to  the  equator  a  thousand  miles  to  Old 
Calabar  at  the  head  of  "the  terrible  bight  of  Biafra,"  the  third 
turning  abruptly  south  and  extending  some  fourteen  hundred 
miles  to  a  short  distance  below  Benguela  where  the  southern 
desert  begins.  The  country  is  commonly  divided  into  Upper 
Guinea  or  the  Sudan,  lying  north  and  west  of  the  great  angle  of 
the  coast,  and  Lower  Guinea,  the  land  of  the  Bantu,  to  the  south- 
ward. Separate  zones  may  also  be  distinguished  as  having  dif- 
ferent systems  of  economy:  in  the  jungle  belt  along  the  equator 
bananas  are  the  staple  diet;  in  the  belts  bordering  this  on  the 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  3 

north  and  south  the  growing  of  millet  and  manioc  respectively, 
in  small  clearings,  are  the  characteristic  industries ;  while  beyond 
the  edges  of  the  continental  forest  cattle  contribute  much  of  the 
food  supply.  The  banana,  millet  and  manioc  zones,  and  espe- 
cially their  swampy  coastal  plains,  were  of  course  the  chief 
sources  of  slaves  for  the  transatlantic  trade. 

Of  all  regions  of  extensive  habitation  equatorial  Africa  is  the 
worst.  The  climate  is  not  only  monotonously  hot,  but  for  the 
greater  part  of  each  year  is  excessively  moist.  Periodic  rains 
bring  deluge  and  periodic  tornadoes  play  havoc.  The  dry  sea- 
sons give  partial  relief,  but  they  bring  occasional  blasts  from  the 
desert  so  dry  and  burning  that  all  nature  droops  and  is  grateful 
at  the  return  of  the  rains.  The  general  dank  heat  stimulates 
vegetable  growth  in  every  scale  from  mildew  to  mahogany  trees, 
and  multiplies  the  members  of  the  animal  kingdom,  be  they 
mosquitoes,  elephants  or  boa  constrictors.  There  would  be  abun- 
dant food  but  for  the  superabundant  creatures  that  struggle  for 
it  and  prey  upon  one  another.  For  mankind  life  is  at  once  easy 
and  hard.  Food  of  a  sort  may  often  be  had  for  the  plucking,  and 
raiment  is  needless;  but  aside  from  the  menace  of  the  elements 
human  life  is  endangered  by  beasts  and  reptiles  in  the  forest, 
crocodiles  and  hippopotami  in  the  rivers,  and  sharks  in  the  sea, 
and  existence  is  made  a  burden  to  all  but  the  happy-hearted  by 
plagues  of  insects  and  parasites.  In  many  districts  tse-tse  flies 
exterminate  the  cattle  and  spread  the  fatal  sleeping-sickness 
among  men;  everywhere  swarms  of  locusts  occasionally  destroy 
the  crops;  white  ants  eat  timbers  and  any  other  useful  thing, 
short  of  metal,  which  may  come  in  their  way ;  giant  cockroaches 
and  dwarf  brown  ants  and  other  pests  in  great  variety  swarm  in 
the  dwellings  continuously — except  just  after  a  village  has  been 
raided  by  the  great  black  ants  which  are  appropriately  known  as 
"drivers."  These  drivers  march  in  solid  columns  miles  on  miles 
until,  when  they  reach  food  resources  to  their  fancy,  they  deploy 
for  action  and  take  things  with  a  rush.  To  stay  among  them  is 
to  die;  but  no  human  being  stays.  A  cry  of  "Drivers!"  will  de- 
populate a  village  instantly,  and  a  missionary  who  at  one  moment 
has  been  combing  brown  ants  from  his  hair  will  in  the  next  find 


4  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

himself  standing  safely  in  the  creek  or  the  water  barrel,  to  stay 
until  the  drivers  have  taken  their  leave.  Among  less  spectacular 
things,  mosquitoes  fly  in  crowds  and  leave  fevers  in  their  wake, 
gnats  and  flies  are  always  on  hand,  chigoes  bore  and  breed  under 
toe-nails,  hook-worms  hang  themselves  to  the  walls  of  the  in- 
testines, and  other  threadlike  worms  enter  the  eyeballs  and  the 
flesh  of  the  body.  Endurance  through  generations  has  given 
the  people  large  immunity  from  the  effects  of  hook-worm  and 
malaria,  but  not  from  the  indigenous  diseases,  kraw-kraw,  yaws 
and  elephantiasis,  nor  of  course  from  dysentery  and  smallpox 
which  the  Europeans  introduced.  Yet  robust  health  is  fairly  com- 
mon, and  where  health  prevails  there  is  generally  happiness,  for 
the  negroes  have  that  within  their  nature.  They  could  not  thrive 
in  Guinea  without  their  temperament. 

It  is  probable  that  no  people  ever  became  resident  on  or  near 
the  west  coast  except  under  compulsion.  From  the  more  favored 
easterly  regions  successive  hordes  have  been  driven  after  defeat 
in  war.  The  Fangs  on  the  Ogowe  are  an  example  in  the  recent 
past.  Thus  the  inhabitants  of  Guinea,  and  of  the  coast  lands 
especially,  have  survived  by  retreating  and  adapting  themselves  to 
conditions  in  which  no  others  wished  to  dwell.  The  requirements 
of  adaptation  were  peculiar.  To  live  where  nature  supplies  Turk- 
ish baths  without  the  asking  necessitates  relaxation.  But  since 
undue  physical  indolence  would  unfit  people  for  resistance  to 
parasites  and  hostile  neighbors,  the  languid  would  perish.  Re- 
laxation of  mind,  however,  brought  no  penalties.  The  climate 
in  fact  not  only  discourages  but  prohibits  mental  effort  of  severe 
or  sustained  character,  and  the  negroes  have  submitted  to  that 
prohibition  as  to  many  others,  through  countless  generations,  with 
excellent  grace.  So  accustomed  were  they  to  interdicts  of  nature 
that  they  added  many  of  their  own  through  conventional  taboo, 
some  of  them  intended  to  prevent  the  eating  of  supposedly  in- 
jurious food,  others  calculated  to  keep  the  commonalty  from  in- 
fringing upon  the  preserves  of  the  dignitaries.^ 

'  A  convenient  sketch  of  the  primitive  African  regime  is  J.  A.  Tilling- 
hast's  The  Negro  in  Africa  and  America,  part  I.  A  fuller  survey  is 
Jerome  Dowd's  The  Negro  Races,  which  contains  a  bibliography  of  the 
sources.     Among   the   writings   of    travelers   and   sojourners   particularly 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  5 

No  people  is  without  its  philosophy  and  religion.  Tq,  the  Afri- 
cans the  forces  of  nature  were  often  injurious  and  always  im- 
pressive. To  invest  them  with  spirits  disposed  to  do  evil  but 
capable  of  being  placated  was  perhaps  an  obvious  recourse;  and 
this  investiture  grew  into  an  elaborate  system  of  superstition. 
Not  only  did  the  wind  and  the  rain  have  their  gods  but  each 
river  and  precipice,  and  each  tribe  and  family  and  person,  a 
tutelary  spirit.  These  might  be  kept  benevolent  by  appropriate 
fetish  ceremonies ;  they  might  be  used  for  evil  by  persons  having 
specially  great  powers  over  them.  The  proper  course  for  com- 
monplace persons  at  ordinary  times  was  to  follow  routine  fetish 
observances ;  but  when  beset  by  witch-work  the  only  escape  lay  in 
the  services  of  witch-doctors  or  priests.  Sacrifices  were  called 
for,  and  on  the  greatest  occasions  nothing  short  of  human  sac- 
rifice was  acceptable. 

As  to  diet,  vegetable  food  was  generally  abundant,  but  the 
negroes  were  not  willingly  complete  vegetarians.  In  the  jungle 
game  animals  were  scarce,  and  everywhere  the  men  were  ill 
equipped  for  hunting.  In  lieu  of  better  they  were  often  fain 
to  satisfy  their  craving  for  flesh  ..by  eating  locusts  and  larvae,  as 
tribes  in  the  interior  still  do.  In  such  conditions  cannibalism 
was  fairly  common.  Especially  prized  was  an  enemy  slain  in 
war,  for  not  only  would  his  body  feed  the  hungry  but  fetish 
taught  that  his  bravery  would  pass  to  those  who  shared  the 
feast. 

In  African  economy  nearly  all  routine  work,  including  agri- 
culture, was  classed  as  domestic  service  and  assigned  to  the 
women  for  performance.  The  wife,  bought  with  a  price  at  the 
time  of  marriage,  was  virtually  a  slave ;  her  husband  her  mas- 
ter. Now  one  woman  might  keep  her  husband  and  children  in 
but  moderate  comfort.  Two  or  more  could  perform  the  family 
tasks  much  better.  Thus  a  man  who  could  pay  the  customary 
price  would  be  inclined  to  add  a  second  wife,  whom  the  first 

notable  are  Mary  Kingsley's  Travels  in  West  Africa  as  a  vivid  picture  of 
coast  life,  and  her  West  African  Studies  for  its  elaborate  and  convincing 
discussion  of  fetish,  and  the  vi^orks  of  Sir  A.  B.  Ellis  on  the  Tshi-,  Ewe- 
and  Yoruba-speaking  peoples  for  their  analyses  of  institutions  along  the 
Gold  Coast. 


6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

would  probably  welcome  as  a  lightener  of  her  burdens.  Polyg- 
amy prevailed  almost  everywhere. 

Slavery,  too,  was  generally  prevalent  except  among  the  few 
tribes  who  gained  their  chief  sustenance  from  hunting.  Along 
with  polygamy,  it  perhaps  originated,  if  it  ever  had  a  distinct 
beginning,  from  the  desire  to  lighten  and  improve  the  domestic 
service.^  Persons  became  slaves  through  capture,  debt  or  mal- 
feasance, or  through  the  inheritance  of  the  status.  While  the 
ownership  was  absolute  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  and  captives  were 
often  treated  with  great  cruelty,  slaves  born  in  the  locality  were 
generally  regarded  as  members  of  their  owner's  family  and  were 
shown  much  consideration.  In  the  millet  zone  where  there  was 
much  work  to  be  done  the  slaveholdings  were  in  many  cases  very 
large  and  the  control  relatively  stringent ;  but  in  the  banana  dis- 
tricts an  easy-going  schedule  prevailed  for  all.  One  of  the 
chief  hardships  of  the  slaves  was  the  liability  of  being  put  to 
death  at  their  master's  funeral  in  order  that  their  spirits  might 
continue  in  his  service.  In  such  case  it  was  customary  on  the 
Gold  Coast  to  give  the  victim  notice  of  his  approaching  death 
by  suddenly  thrusting  a  knife  through  each  cheek  with  the  blades 
crossing  in  his  mouth  so  that  he  might  not  curse  his  master  be- 
fore he  died.  With  his  hands  tied  behind  him  he  would  then  be 
led  to  the  ceremonial  slaughter.  The  Africans  were  in  general 
eager  traders  in  slaves  as  well  as  other  goods,  even  before  the 
time  when  the  transatlantic  trade,  by  giving  excessive  stimulus  to 
raiding  and  trading,  transformed  the  native  economy  and  de- 
ranged the  social  order. 

Apart  from  a  few  great  towns  such  as  Coomassee  and  Benin, 
life  in  Guinea  was  wholly  on  a  village  basis,  each  community 
dwelling  in  its  own  clearing  and  having  very  slight  intercourse 
with  its  neighbors.  Politically  each  village  was  governed  by  its 
chief  and  its  elders,  oftentimes  m  complete  independence.  In 
occasional  instances,  however,  considerable  states  of  loose  or- 
ganization were  under  the  rule   of   central   authorities.     Such 

•  Slavery  among  the  Africans  and  other  primitive  peoples  has  been  elab- 
orately discussed  by  H.  J.  Nieboer,  Slavery  as  an  Industrial  System: 
Ethnological  Researches  (The  Hague,  1900). 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  7 

states  were  likely  to  be  the  creation  of  invaders  from  the  east- 
ward, the  Dahomans  and  Ashantees  for  example;  but  the  king- 
dom of  Benin  appears  to  have  arisen  indigenously.  In  many  cases 
the  subordination  of  conquered  villages  merely  resulted  in  their 
paying  annual  tribute.  As  to  language,  Lower  Guinea  spoke 
multitudinous  dialects  of  the  one  Bantu  tongue,  but  in  Upper 
Guinea  there  were  many  dialects  of  many  separate  languages. 

Land  was  so  abundant  and  so  little  used  industrially  that  as 
a  rule  it  was  not  owned  in  severalty ;  and  even  the  villages  and 
tribes  had  little  occasion  to  mark  the  limits  of  their  domains. 
For  travel  by  land  there  were  nothing  but  narrow,  rough  and 
tortuous  foot-paths,  with  makeshift  bridges  across  the  smaller 
streams.  The  rivers  were  highly  advantageous  both  as  avenues 
and  as  sources  of  food,  for  the  negroes  were  expert  at  canoeing 
and  fishing. 

Intertribal  wars  were  occasional,  but  a  crude  comity  lessened 
their  frequency.  Thus  if  a  man  of  one  village  murdered  one  of 
another,  the  aggrieved  village  if  too  weak  to  procure  direct  re- 
dress might  save  its  face  by  killing  someone  in  a  third  village, 
whereupon  the  third  must  by  intertribal  convention  make  com- 
mon cause  with  the  second  at  once,  or  else  coerce  a  fourth  into 
the  punitive  alliance  by  applying  the  same  sort  of  persuasion  that 
it  had  just  felt.  These  later  killings  in  the  series  were  not  re- 
garded as  murders  but  as  diplomatic  overtures.  The  system 
was  hard  upon  those  who  were  sacrificed  in  its  operation,  but 
it  kept  a  check  upon  outlawry. 

A  skin  stretched  over  the  section  of  a  hollow  tree,  and  usually 
so  constructed  as  to  have  two  tones,  made  an  instrument  of  ex- 
traordinary use  in  communication  as  well  as  in  music.  By  a 
system  long  anticipating  the  Morse  code  the  Africans  employed 
this  "telegraph  drum"  in  sending  messages  from  village  to  village 
for  long  distances  and  with  great  speed.  Differences  of  speech 
were  no  bar,  for  the  tom  tom  code  was  interlingual.  The  official 
drummer  could  explain  by  the  high  and  low  alternations  of  his 
taps  that  a  deed  of  violence  just  done  was  not  a  crime  but  a 
pourparler  for  the  forming  of  a  league.  Every  week  for  three 
months  in  1800  the  tom  toms  doubtless  carried  the  news  through- 


8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

out  Ashantee  land  that  King  Quamina's  funeral  had  just  been 
repeated  and  two  hundred  more  slaves  slain  to  do  him  honor. 
In  1806  they  perhaps  reported  the  ending  of  Mungo  Park's  trav- 
els by  his  death  on  the  Niger  at  the  hands  of  the  Boussa  people. 
Again  and  again  drummers  hired  as  trading  auxiliaries  would 
send  word  along  the  coast  and  into  the  country  that  white  men's 
vessels  lying  at  Lagos,  Bonny,  Loango  or  Benguela  as  the  case 
might  be  were  paying  the  best  rates  in  calico,  rum  or  Yankee 
notions  for  all  slaves  that  might  be  brought. 

In  music  the  monotony  of  the  torn  tom's  tone  spurred  the 
drummers  to  elaborate  variations  in  rhythm.  The  stroke  of  the 
skilled  performer  could  make  it  mourn  a  funeral  dirge,  voice  the 
nuptial  joy,  throb  the  pageant's  march,  and  roar  the  ambush 
alarm.  Vocal  music  might  be  punctuated  by  tom  toms  and  prim- 
itive wind  or  stringed  instruments,  or  might  swell  in  solo  or 
chorus  without  accompaniment.  Singing,  however,  appears  not 
so  characteristic  of  Africans  at  home  as  of  the  negroes  in 
America.  On  the  other  hand  garrulous  conversation,  interspersed 
with  boisterous  laughter,  lasted  well-nigh  the  livelong  day.  Daily 
life,  indeed,  was  far  from  dull,  for  small  things  were  esteemed 
great,  and  every  episode  was  entertaining.  It  can  hardly  be  main- 
tained that  savage  life  is  idyllic.  Yet  the  question  remains,  and 
may  long  remain,  whether  the  manner  in  which  the  negroes  were 
brought  into  touch  with  civilization  resulted  in  the  greater  bless- 
ing or  the  greater  curse.  That  manner  was  determined  in  part  at 
least  by  the  nature  of  the  typical  negroes  themselves.  Impulsive 
and  inconstant,  sociable  and  amorous,  voluble,  dilatory,  and  negli- 
gent, but  robust,  amiable,  obedient  and  contented,  they  have  been 
the  world's  premium  slaves.  Prehistoric  Pharaohs,  mediaeval 
Pashas  and  the  grandees  of  Elizabethan  England  esteemed  them 
as  such ;  and  so  great  a  connoisseur  in  household  service  as  the 
Czar  Alexander  added  to  his  palace  corps  in  18 10  two  free  ne- 
groes, one  a  steward  on  an  American  merchant  ship  and  the  other 
a  body-servant  whom  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  American  minis- 
ter, had  brought  from  Massachusetts  to  St.  Petersburg.* 

*  Writings  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  Ford  ed.,  Ill,  47i.  472  (New  York, 
1914). 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  9 

The  impulse  for  the  enslavement  of  negroes  by  other  peoples 
came  from  the  Arabs  who  spread  over  northern  Africa  in  the 
eighth  century,  conquering  and  converting  as  they  w^ent,  and 
stimulating  the  trade  across  the  Sahara  until  it  attained  large  di- 
mensions. The  northbound  caravans  carried  the  peculiar  variety 
of  pepper  called  "grains  of  paradise"  from  the  region  later  known 
as  Liberia,  gold  from  the  Dahomey  district,  palm  oil  from  the 
lower  Niger,  and  ivory  and  slaves  from  far  and  wide.  A  small 
quantity  of  these  various  goods  was  distributed  in  southern  Eu- 
rope and  the  Levant.  And  in  the  same  general  period  Arab  dhows 
began  to  take  slave  cargoes  from  the  east  coast  of  Africa  as  far 
south  as  Mozambique,  for  distribution  in  Arabia,  Persia  and 
western  India.  On  these  northern  and  eastern  flanks  of  Guinea 
where  the  Mohammedans  operated  and  where  the  most  vigorous 
of  the  African  peoples  dwelt,  the  natives  lent  ready  assistance  in 
catching  and  buying  slaves  in  the  interior  and  driving  them  in 
coffles  to  within  reach  of  the  Moorish  and  Arab  traders.  Their 
activities,  reaching  at  length  the  very  center  of  the  continent,  con- 
stituted without  doubt  the  most  cruel  of  all  branches  of  the  slave- 
trade.  The  routes  across  the  burning  Sahara  sands  in  particular 
came  to  be  strewn  with  negro  skeletons.^ 

This  overland  trade  was  as  costly  as  it  was  tedious.  Deal- 
ers in  Timbuctoo  and  other  centers  of  supply  must  be  paid  their 
price;  camels  must  be  procured,  many  of  which  died  on  the  jour- 
ney ;  guards  must  be  hired  to  prevent  escapes  in  the  early  marches 
and  to  repel  predatory  Bedouins  in  the  later  ones ;  food  suppHes 
must  be  bought ;  and  allowance  must  be  made  for  heavy  mortality 
among  the  slaves  on  their  terrible  trudge  over  the  burning  sands 
and  the  chilling  mountains.'  But  wherever  Mohammedanism  pre- 
vailed, which  gave  particular  sanction  to  slavery  as  well  as  to 
polygamy,  the  virtues  of  the  negroes  as  laborers  and  as  eunuch 
harem  guards  were  so  highly  esteemed  that  the  trade  was  main- 
tained on  a  heavy  scale  almost  if  not  quite  to  the  present  day. 
The  demand  of  the  Turks  in  the  Levant  and  the  Moors  in  Spain 
was  met  by  exportations  from  the  various  Barbary  ports.    Part 

*  Jerome  Dowd,  "The  African  Slave  Trade,"  in  the  Journal  of  Negro 
History,  II  (1917),  1-20. 


lo  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

of  this  Mediterranean  trade  was  conducted  in  Turkish  and  Moor- 
ish vessels,  and  part  of  it  in  the  ships  of  the  Italian  cities  and 
Marseilles  and  Barcelona.  Venice  for  example  had  treaties  with 
certain  Saracen  rulers  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century 
authorizing  her  merchants  not  only  to  frequent  the  African  ports, 
but  to  go  in  caravans  to  interior  points  and  stay  at  will.  The 
principal  commodities  procured  were  ivory,  gold,  honey  and 
negro  slaves." 

The  states  of  Christian  Europe,  though  little  acquainted  with 
negroes,  had  still  some  trace  of  slavery  as  an  inheritance  from 
imperial  Rome  and  barbaric  Teutondom.  The  chattel  form  of 
bondage,  however,  had  quite  generally  given  place  to  serf- 
dom; and  even  serfdom  was  disappearing  in  many  districts  by 
reason  of  the  growth  of  towns  and  the  increase  of  rural  popula- 
tion to  the  point  at  which  abundant  labor  could  be  had  at  wages 
little  above  the  cost  of  sustaining  life.  On  the  other  hand  so 
long  as  petty  wars  persisted  the  enslavement  of  captives  contin- 
ued to  be  at  least  sporadic,  particularly  in  the  south  and  east  of 
Europe,  and  a  considerable  traffic  in  white  slaves  was  maintained 
from  east  to  west  on  the  Mediterranean.  The  Venetians  for 
instance,  in  spite  of  ecclesiastical  prohibitions,  imported  frequent 
cargoes  of  young  girls  from  the  countries  about  the  Black  Sea, 
most  of  whom  were  doomed  to  concubinage  and  prostitution, 
and  the  rest  to  menial  service.''  The  occurrence  of  the  Crusades 
led  to  the  enslavement  of  Saracen  captives  in  Christendom  as  well 
as  of  Christian  captives  in  Islam. 

The  waning  of  the  Crusades  ended  the  supply  of  Saracen 
slaves,  and  the  Turkish  capture  of  Constantinople  in  1453  de- 
stroyed the  ItaHan  trade  on  the  Black  Sea.  No  source  of  sup- 
ply now  remained,  except  a  trickle  from  Africa,  to  sustain  the 
moribund  institution  of  slavery  in  any  part  of  Christian  Europe 
east  of  the  Pyrenees.  But  in  mountain-locked  Roussillon  and 
Asturias  remnants  of  slavery  persisted  from  Visigothic  times  to 
the  seventeenth  century;  and  in  other  parts  of  the  peninsula 

*  The  leading  authority  upon  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean countries  of  Europe  is  J.  A.  Saco,  Historia  de  la  Esclazntud  desde 
los  Tiempas  mas  remotas  hasta  nuestros  Dias  (Barcelona,  1877),  vol.  III. 

''W.  C.  Hazlitt,  The  Vettetian  Republic  (London,  1900),  pp.  81,  82. 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  II 

the  intermittent  wars  against  the  Moors  of  Granada  supplied 
captives  and  to  some  extent  reinvigorated  slavery  among  the 
Christian  states  from  Aragon  to  Portugal.  Furthermore  the  con- 
quest of  the  Canaries  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  and 
of  Teneriffe  and  other  islands  in  the  fifteenth  led  to  the  bringing 
of  many  of  their  natives  as  slaves  to  Castille  and  the  neighbor- 
ing kingdoms. 

Occasional  documents  of  this  period  contain  mention  of  negro 
slaves  at  various  places  in  the  Spanish  peninsula,  but  the  number 
was  clearly  small  and  it  must  have  continued  so,  particularly  as 
long  as  the  supply  was  drawn  through  Moorish  channels.  The 
source  whence  the  negroes  came  was  known  to  be  a  region  below 
the  Sahara  which  from  its  yield  of  gold  and  ivory  was  called 
by  the  Moors  the  land  of  wealth,  "Bilad  Ghana,"  a  name  which 
on  the  tongues  of  European  sailors  was  converted  into  "Guinea." 
To  open  a  direct  trade  thither  was  a  natural  effort  when  the  age 
of  maritime  exploration  began.  The  French  are  said  to  have 
made  voyages  to  the  Gold  Coast  in  the  fourteenth  century,  though 
apparently  without  trading  in  slaves.  But  in  the  absence  of  rec- 
ords of  their  activities  authentic  history  must  confine  itself  to 
the  achievements  of  the  Portuguese. 

In  141 5  John  II  of  Portugal,  partly  to  give  his  five  sons  oppor- 
tunity to  win  knighthood  in  battle,  attacked  and  captured  the 
Moorish  stronghold  of  Ceuta,  facing  Gibraltar  across  the  strait. 
For  several  years  thereafter  the  town  was  left  in  charge'of  the 
youngest  of  these  princes,  Henry,  who  there  acquired  an  en- 
during desire  to  gain  for  Portugal  and  Christianity  the  regions 
whence  the  northbound  caravans  were  coming.  Returning 
home,  he  fixed  his  residence  at  the  promontory  of  Sagres,  on 
Cape  St.  Vincent,  and  made  his  main  interest  for  forty  years 
the  promotion  of  maritime  exploration  southward.*  His  perse- 
verance won  him  fame  as  "Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,"  though 
he  was  not  himself  an  active  sailor ;  and  furthermore,  after  many 
disappointments,  it  resulted  in  exploration  as  far  as  the  Gold 
Coast  in  his  lifetime  and  the  rounding  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 

'  The  chief  source  for  the  early  Portuguese  voyages  is  Azurara's 
Chronicle  of  the  Discovery  and  Conquest  of  Guinea,  already  cited. 


12  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

twenty-five  years  after  his  death.  The  first  decade  of  his  en- 
deavor brought  Httle  result,  for  the  Sahara  shore  was  forbidding 
and  the  sailors  timid.  Then  in  1434  Gil  Eannes  doubled  Cape 
Bojador  and  found  its  dangers  imaginary.  Subsequent  voyages 
added  to  the  extent  of  coast  skirted  until  the  desert  began  to 
give  place  to  inhabited  country.  The  Prince  was  now  eager  for 
captives  to  be  taken  who  might  inform  him  of  the  country,  and 
in  1441  Antam  Gonsalvez  brought  several  Moors  from  the 
southern  edge  of  the  desert,  who,  while  useful  as  informants, 
advanced  a  new  theme  of  interest  by  offering  to  ransom  them- 
selves by  delivering  on  the  coast  a  larger  number  of  non-Mo- 
hammedan negroes,  whom  the  Moors  held  as  slaves.  Partly  for 
the  sake  of  profit,  though  the  chronicler  says  more  largely  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  souls  to  be  saved,  this  exchange  was  ef- 
fected in  the  following  year  in  the  case  of  two  of  the  Moors, 
while  a  third  took  his  liberty  without  delivering  his  ransom. 
After  the  arrival  in  Portugal  of  these  exchanged  negroes,  ten  in 
number,  and  several  more  small  parcels  of  captives,  a  company 
organized  at  Lagos  under  the  direction  of  Prince  Henry  sent 
forth  a  fleet  of  six  caravels  in  1444  which  promptly  returned  with 
225  captives,  the  disposal  of  whom  has  been  recounted  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter. 

In  the  next  year  the  Lagos  Company  sent  a  great  expedition 
of  twenty-six  vessels  which  discovered  the  Senegal  River  and 
brought  back  many  natives  taken  in  raids  thereabout;  and  by 
1448  nearly  a  thousand  captives  had  been  carried  to  Portugal. 
Some  of  these  were  Moorish  Berbers,  some  negroes,  but  most 
were  probably  Jolofs  from  the  Senegal,  a  warlike  people  of 
mixed  ancestry.  Raiding  in  the  Jolof  country  proved  so  haz- 
ardous that  from  about  1454  the  Portuguese  began  to  supple- 
ment their  original  methods  by  planting  "factories"  on  the  coast 
where  slaves  from  the  interior  were  bought  from  their  native 
captors  and  owners  who  had  brought  them  down  in  caravans  and 
canoes.  Thus  not  only  was  missionary  zeal  eclipsed  but  the  de- 
sire of  conquest  likewise,  and  the  spirit  of  exploration  erelong 
partly  subdued,  by  commercial  greed.  By  the  time  of  Prince 
Henry's  death  in  1460  Portugal  was  importing  seven  or  eight 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  13 

hundred  negro  slaves  each  year.  From  this  time  forward  the 
traffic  was  conducted  by  a  succession  of  companies  and  individ- 
ual grantees,  to  whom  the  government  gave  the  exclusive  right 
for  short  terms  of  years  in  consideration  of  money  payments  and 
pledges  of  adding  specified  measures  of  exploration.  As  new 
coasts  were  reached  additional  facilities  were  established  for 
trade  in  pepper,  ivory  and  gold  as  well  as  in  slaves.  When  the 
route  round  Africa  to  India  was  opened  at  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury the  Guinea  trade  fell  to  secondary  importance,  but  it  was 
by  no  means  discontinued. 

Of  the  negroes  carried  to  Portugal  in  the  fifteenth  century  a 
large  proportion  were  set  to  work  as  slaves  on  great  estates  in 
the  southern  provinces  recently  vacated  by  the  Moors,  and  others 
were  employed  as  domestic  servants  in  Lisbon  and  other  towns. 
Some  were  sold  into  Spain  where  they  were  similarly  employed, 
and  where  their  numbers  were  recruited  by  a  Guinea  trade  in 
Spanish  vessels  in  spite  of  Portugal's  claim  of  monopoly  rights, 
even  though  Isabella  had  recognized  these  in  a  treaty  of  1479. 
In  short,  at  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  America  Spain  as  well 
as  Portugal  had  quite  appreciable  numbers  of  negroes  in  her 
population  and  both  were  maintaining  a  system  of  slavery  for 
their  control. 

When  Columbus  returned  from  his  first  voyage  in  the  spring 
of  1493  and  announced  his  great  landfall,  Spain  promptly  en- 
tered upon  her  career  of  American  conquest  and  colonization. 
So  great  was  the  expectation  of  adventure  and  achievement  that 
the  problem  of  the  government  was  not  how  to  enlist  participants 
but  how  to  restrain  a  great  exodus.  Under  heavy  penalties  emi- 
gration was  restricted  by  royal  decrees  to  those  who  procured 
permission  to  go.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  fifteen  hun- 
dred men,  soldiers,  courtiers,  priests  and  laborers,  accompanied 
the  discoverer  on  his  second  voyage,  in  radiant  hopes.  But  in- 
stead of  wealth  and  high  adventure  these  Argonauts  met  hard 
labor  and  sickness.  Instead  of  the  rich  cities  of  Japan  and  China 
sought  for,  there  were  found  squalid  villages  of  Caribs  and  Lu- 
cayans.     Of  gold  there  was  little,  of  spices  none. 

Columbus,  when  planting  his  colony  at  Isabella,  on  the  north- 


14  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

em  coast  of  Hispaniola  (Hayti),  promptly  found  need  of 
draught  animals  and  other  equipment.  He  wrote  to  his  sover- 
eigns in  January,  1494,  asking  for  the  supplies  needed ;  and  he 
offered,  pending  the  discovery  of  more  precious  things,  to  de- 
fray expenses  by  shipping  to  Spain  some  of  the  island  natives, 
"who  are  a  wild  people  fit  for  any  work,  well  proportioned  and 
very  intelligent,  and  who  when  they  have  got  rid  of  their  cruel 
habits  to  which  they  have  been  accustomed  will  be  better  than 
any  other  kind  of  slaves."  ^  Though  this  project  was  discour- 
aged by  the  crown,  Columbus  actually  took  a  cargo  of  Indians 
for  sale  in  Spain  on  his  return  from  his  third  voyage;  but 
Isabella  stopped  the  sale  and  ordered  the  captives  taken  home 
and  liberated.  Columbus,  like  most  of  his  generation,  regarded 
the  Indians  as  infidel  foreigners  to  be  exploited  at  will.  But 
Isabella,  and  to  some  extent  her  successors,  considered  them 
Spanish  subjects  whose  helplessness  called  for  special  protec- 
tion. Between  the  benevolence  of  the  distant  monarchs  and  the 
rapacity  of  the  present  conquerors,  however,  the  fate  of  the 
natives  was  in  little  doubt.  The  crown's  officials  in  the  Indies 
were  the  very  conquerors  themselves,  who  bent  their  soft  in- 
structions to  fit  their  own  hard  wills.  A  native  rebellion  in 
Hispaniola  in  1495  was  crushed  with  such  slaughter  that  within 
three  years  the  population  is  said  to  have  been  reduced  by 
two  thirds.  As  terms  of  peace  Columbus  required  annual  tribute 
in  gold  so  great  that  no  amount  of  labor  in  washing  the  sands 
could  furnish  it.  As  a  commutation  of  tribute  and  as  a  means 
of  promoting  the  conversion  of  the  Indians  there  was  soon 
inaugurated  the  encomienda  system  which  afterward  spread 
throughout  Spanish  America.  To  each  Spaniard  selected  as 
an  encomendero  was  allotted  a  certain  quota  of  Indians  bound 
to  cultivate  land  for  his  benefit  and  entitled  to  receive  from  him 
tutelage  in  civilization  and  Christianity.  The  grantees,  however, 
were  not  assigned  specified  Indians  but  merely  specified  numbers 
of  them,  with  power  to  seize  new  ones  to  replace  any  who 
might  die  or  run  away.    Thus  the  encomendero  was  given  little 

•R.  H.  Major,  Select  Letters  of  Columbus,  2d.  ed.,  1890,  p.  88. 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  15 

economic  interest  in  preserving  the  lives  and  welfare  of  his 
workmen. 

In  the  first  phase  of  the  system  the  Indians  were  secured  in 
the  right  of  dwelling  in  their  own  villages  under  their  own 
chiefs.  But  the  encomenderos  complained  that  the  aloofness  of 
the  natives  hampered  the  work  of  conversion  and  asked  that  a 
fuller  and  more  intimate  control  be  authorized.  This  was 
promptly  granted  and  as  promptly  abused.  Such  limitations 
as  the  law  still  imposed  upon  encomendero  power  were  made 
of  no  effect  by  the  lack  of  machinery  for  enforcement.  The 
relationship  in  short,  which  the  law  declared  to  be  one  ol  guar- 
dian and  ward,  became  harsher  than  if  it  had  been  that  of 
master  and  slave.  Most  of  the  island  natives  were  submissive 
in  disposition  and  weak  in  physique,  and  they  were  terribly  driven 
at  their  work  in  the  fields,  on  the  roads,  and  at  the  mines.  With 
smallpox  and  other  pestilences  added  to  their  hardships,  they 
died  so  fast  that  before  15 10  Hispaniola  was  confronted  with 
the  prospect  of  the  complete  disappearance  of  its  laboring  popu- 
lation.^"  Meanwhile  the  same  regime  was  being  carried  to  Porto 
Rico,  Jamaica  and  Cuba  with  similar  consequences  in  its  train. 

As  long  as  mining  remained  the  chief  industry  the  islands 
failed  to  prosper;  and  the  reports  of  adversity  so  strongly 
checked  the  Spanish  impulse  for  adventure  that  special  induce- 
ments by  the  government  were  required  to  sustain  any  flow  of 
emigration.  But  in  1 512-15 15  the  introduction  of  sugar-cane  cul- 
ture brought  the  beginning  of  a  change  in  the  industrial  situa- 
tion. The  few  surviving  gangs  of  Indians  began  to  be  shifted 
from  the  mines  to  the  fields,  and  a  demand  for  a  new  labor 
supply  arose  which  could  be  met  only  from  across  the  sea. 

Apparently  no  negroes  were  brought  to  the  islands  before 

1 501.     In  that  year,  however,  a  royal  decree,  while  excluding 

Jews  and  Moors,  authorized  the  transportation  of  negroes  born 

in  Christian  lands;  and  some  of  these  were  doubtless  carried 

to  Hispaniola  in  the  great  fleet  of  Ovando,  the  new  governor,  in 

**E.  G.  Bourne,  Spain  in  America  (New  York,  1904)  ;  Wilhelm  Roscher, 
The  Spanish  Colonial  System,^  Bourne  ed.  (New  York,  1904)  ;  Konrad 
Habler,  "The  Spanish  Colonial  Empire,"  in  Helmolt,  History  of  the 
World,  vol  I. 


I6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

1502.  Ovando's  reports  of  this  experiment  were  conflicting.  In 
the  year  following  his  arrival  he  advised  that  no  more  negroes 
be  sent,  because  of  their  propensity  to  run  away  and  band  with 
and  corrupt  the  Indians.  But  after  another  year  had  elapsed 
he  requested  that  more  negroes  be  sent.  In  this  interim  the 
humane  Isabella  died  and  the  more  callous  Ferdinand  acceded 
to  full  control.  In  consequence  a  prohibition  of  the  negro  trade 
in  1504  was  rescinded  in  1505  and  replaced  by  orders  that  the 
bureau  in  charge  of  colonial  trade  promote  the  sending  of  ne- 
groes from  Spain  in  large  parcels.  For  the  next  twelve  years 
this  policy  was  maintained — ^the  sending  of  Christian  negroes 
was  encouraged,  while  the  direct  slave  trade  from  Africa  to 
America  was  prohibited.  The  number  of  negroes  who  reached 
the  islands  under  this  regime  is  not  ascertainable.  It  was  clearly 
almost  negligible  in  comparison  with  the  increasing  demand.^^ 

The  policy  of  excluding  negroes  fresh  from  Africa — "bozal 
negroes"  the  Spaniards  called  them^ — was  of  course  a  product 
of  the  characteristic  resolution  to  keep  the  colonies  free  from 
all  influences  hostile  to  Catholic  orthodoxy.  But  whereas  Jews, 
Mohammedans  and  Christian  heretics  were  considered  as  cham- 
pions of  rival  faiths,  the  pagan  blacks  came  increasingly  to  be 
reckoned  as  having  no  religion  and  therefore  as  a  mere  passive 
element  ready  for  christianization.  As  early  as  15 10,  in  fact, 
the  Spanish  crown  relaxed  its  discrimination  against  pagans  by 
ordering  the  purchase  of  above  a  hundred  negro  slaves  in  the 
Lisbon  market  for  dispatch  to  Hispaniola.  To  quiet  its  relig- 
ious scruples  the  government  hit  upon  the  device  of  requiring 
the  baptism  of  all  pagan  slaves  upon  their  disembarkation  in 
the  colonial  ports. 

The  crown  was  clearly  not  prepared  to  withstand  a  campaign 
for  supplies  direct  from  Africa,  especially  after  the  accession  of 
the  youth  Charles  I  in  15 17.  At  that  very  time  a  clamor  from 
the  islands  reached  its  climax.     Not  only  did  many  civil  offi- 

"  The  chief  authority  upon  the  origin  and  growth  of  negf o  slavery  in  the 
Spanish  colonies  is  J.  A.  Saco,  Historia  de  la  Esclayitud  de  la  Rasa 
Africana  en  el  Nuevo  Mundo  y  en  especial  en  los  Paises  Americo-tJis- 
panos.  (Barcelona,  1879.)  This  book  supplements  the  same  author's  His- 
toria de  la  Esclavitud  desde  los  Tiempos  remotos  previously  cited. 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  17 

cials,  voicing  public  opinion  in  their  island  communities,  urge 
that  the  supply  of  negro  slaves  be  greatly  increased  as  a  means 
of  preventing  industrial  collapse,  but  a  delegation  of  Jeronimite 
friars  and  the  famous  Bartholomeo  de  las  Casas,  who  had 
formerly  been  a  Cuban  encomendero  and  was  now  a  Dominican 
priest,  appeared  in  Spain  to  press  the  same  or  kindred  causes. 
The  Jeronimites,  themselves  concerned  in  industrial  enterprises, 
were  mostly  interested  in  the  labor  supply.  But  the  well-born  and 
highly  talented  Las  Casas,  earnest  and  full  of  the  milk  of  human 
kindness,  was  moved  entirely  by  humanitarian  and  religious 
considerations.  He  pleaded  primarily  for  the  abolition  of  the 
encomienda  system  and  the  establishment  of  a  great  Indian 
reservation  under  missionary  control,  and  he  favored  the  in- 
creased transfer  of  Christian  negroes  from  Spain  as  a  means  of 
relieving  the  Indians  from  their  terrible  sufferings.  The  lay 
spokesmen  and  the  Jeronimites  asked  that  provision  be  made 
for  the  sending  of  thousands  of  negro  slaves,  preferably  bozal 
negroes  for  the  sake  of  cheapness  and  plenty;  and  the  supporters 
of  this  policy  were  able  to  turn  to  their  use  the  favorable  impres- 
sion which  Las  Casas  was  making,  even  though  his  programme 
and  theirs  were  different.^^  The  outcome  was  that  while  the 
settling  of  the  encomienda  problem  was  indefinitely  postponed, 
authorization  was  promptly  given  for  a  supply  of  bozal  negroes. 
The  crown  here  had  an  opportunity  to  get  large  revenues,  of 
which  it  was  in  much  need,  by  letting  the  slave  trade  under  con- 
tract or  by  levying  taxes  upon  it.  The  young  king,  however, 
freshly  arrived  from  the  Netherlands  with  a  crowd  of  Flemish 
favorites  in  his  train,  proceeded  to  issue  gratuitously  a  license 
for  the  trade  to  one  of  the  Flemings  at  court,  Laurent  de 
Gouvenot,  known  in  Spain  as  Garrevod,  the  governor  of  Breza. 
This  license  empowered  the  grantee  and  his  assigns  to  ship 
from  Guinea  to  the  Spanish  islands  four  thousand  slaves.  All 
the  historians  until  recently  have  placed  this  grant  in  the  year 
1 5 17  and  have  called  it  a  contract  (asiento)  ;  but  Georges 
Scelle  has  now  discovered  and  printed  the  document  itself  which 

"Las  Casas,  Historia  de  las  Indias  (Madrid,  1875,  1876) ;  Arthur  Helps, 
Life  of  Las  Casas  (London,  1873)  ;  Saco,  op.  cit.,  pp.  62-104. 


i8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

bears  the  date  August  i8,  1518,  and  is  clearly  a  license  of  grace 
bearing  none  of  the  distinctive  asiento  features.^'  Garrevod, 
who  wanted  ready  cash  rather  than  a  trading  privilege,  at  once 
divided  his  license  into  two  and  sold  them  for  25,000  ducats 
to  certain  Genoese  merchants  domiciled  at  Seville,  who  in  turn 
split  them  up  again  and  put  them  on  the  market  where  they 
became  an  object  of  active  speculation  at  rapidly  rising  prices. 
The  result  was  that  when  slaves  finally  reached  the  islands  un- 
der Garrevod's  grant  the  prices  demanded  for  them  were  so 
exorbitant  that  the  purposes  of  the  original  petitioners  were  in 
large  measure  defeated.  Meanwhile  the  king,  in  spite  of  the 
nominally  exclusive  character  of  the  Garrevod  grant,  issued 
various  other  licenses  on  a  scale  ranging  from  ten  to  four  hun- 
dred slaves  each.  For  a  decade  the  importations  were  small, 
however,  and  the  island  clamor  increased. 

In  1528  a  new  exclusive  grant  was  issued  to  two  German 
courtiers  at  Seville,  Eynger  and  Sayller,  empowering  them  to 
carry  four  thousand  slaves  from  Guinea  to  the  Indies  within 
the  space  of  the  following  four  years.  This  differed  from  Garre- 
vod's in  that  it  required  a  payment  of  20,000  ducats  to  the 
crown  and  restricted  the  price  at  which  the  slaves  were  to  be 
sold  in  the  islands  to  forty  ducats  each.  In  so  far  it  approached 
the  asientos  of  the  full  type  which  became  the  regular  recourse  of 
the  Spanish  government  in  the  following  centuries ;  but  it  fell 
short  of  the  ultimate  plan  by  failing  to  bind  the  grantees  to  the 
performance  of  their  undertaking  and  by  failing  to  specify 
the  grades  and  the  proportion  of  the  sexes  among  the  slaves 
to  be  delivered.  In  short  the  crown's  regard  was  still  directed 
more  to  the  enrichment  of  courtiers  than  to  the  promotion  of 
prosperity  in  the   islands. 

After  the  expiration  of  the  Eynger  and  Sayller  grant  the 
king  left  the  control  of  the  slave  trade  to  the  regular  imperial 
administrative  boards,  which,  rejecting  all  asiento  overtures  for 
half  a  century,  maintained  a  policy  of  granting  licenses  for  com- 

"  Georges  Scelle,  Histoirc  Politique  de  la  Traite  Negricre  aux  hides  de 
Castille:  Contrats  et  Traites  d'Asienlo  (Paris,  1906),  1,  755.  Book  I, 
chapter  2  of  the  same  volume  is  an  elaborate  discussion  of  the  Garrevod 
grant. 


THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  GUINEA  19 

petitive  trade  in  return  for  payments  of  eight  or  ten  ducats  per 
head  until  1560,  and  of  thirty  ducats  or  more  thereafter.  At 
length,  after  the  Spanish  annexation  of  Portugal  in  1580,  the 
government  gradually  reverted  to  monopoly  grants,  now  how- 
ever in  the  definite  form  of  asientos,  in  which  by  intent  at  least 
the  authorities  made  the  public  interest,  with  combined  regard 
to  the  revenue  and  a  guaranteed  labor  supply,  the  primary  con- 
sideration.^* The  high  prices  charged  for  slaves,  however,  to- 
gether with  the  burdensome  restrictions  constantly  maintained 
upon  trade  in  general,  steadily  hampered  the  growth  of  Span- 
ish colonial  industry.  Furthermore  the  allurements  of  Mexico 
and  Peru  drained  the  older  colonies  of  virtually  all  their  more 
vigorous  white  inhabitants,  in  spite  of  severe  penalties  legally 
imposed  upon  emigration  but  never  effectively  enforced. 

The  agricultural  regime  in  the  islands  was  accordingly  kept 
relatively  stagnant  as  long  as  Spain  preserved  her  full  West  In- 
dian domination.  The  sugar  industry,  which  by  1542  exported 
the  staple  to  the  amount  of  110,000  arrobas  of  twenty-five  pounds 
each,  was  standardized  in  plantations  of  two  types — the  trapiche 
whose  cane  was  ground  by  ox  power  and  whose  labor  force 
was  generally  thirty  or  forty  negroes  (each  reckoned  as  capable 
of  the  labor  of  four  Indians)  ;  and  the  ingenio,  equipped  with  a 
water-power  mill  and  employing  about  a  hundred  slaves.^^  Oc- 
casional slave  revolts  disturbed  the  Spanish  islanders  but  never 
for  long  diminished  their  eagerness  for  slave  recruits.  The 
slave  laws  were  relatively  mild,  the  police  administration  ex- 
tremely casual,  and  the  plantation  managements  easy-going.  In 
short,  after  introducing  slavery  into  the  new  world  the  Span- 
iards maintained  it  in  sluggish  fashion,  chiefly  in  the  islands, 
as  an  institution  which  peoples  more  vigorous  industrially  might 
borrow  and  adapt  to  a  more  energetic  plantation  regime. 

"  Scelle,  I,  books  1-3. 

"Saco,  pp.  127,  128,  188;  Oviedo,  Historia  General  de  las  Indias,  book  4. 
chap.  8. 


CHAPTER    II 
THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE 

AT  the  request  of  a  slaver's  captain  the  government  of 
Georgia  issued  in  1772  a  certificate  to  a  certain  Fenda 
Lawrence  reciting  that  she,  "a  free  black  woman  and 
heretofore  a  considerable  trader  in  the  river  Gambia  on  the  coast 
of  Africa,  hath  voluntarily  come  to  be  and  remain  for  some  time 
in  this  province,"  and  giving  her  permission  to  "pass  and  repass 
unmolested  within  the  said  province  on  her  lawfull  and  necessary 
occations."  ^  This  instance  is  highly  exceptional.  The  millions 
of  African  expatriates  went  against  their  own  wills,  and  their 
transporters  looked  upon  the  business  not  as  passenger  traffic  but 
as  trade  in  goods.  Earnings  came  from  selling  in  America  the 
cargoes  bought  in  Africa;  the  transportation  was  but  an  item 
in  the  trade. 

The  business  bulked  so  large  in  the  world's  commerce  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  that  every  important  mari- 
time communit)'  on  the  Atlantic  sought  a  share,  generally  with 
the  sanction  and  often  with  the  active  assistance  of  its  respective 
sovereign.  The  preliminaries  to  the  commercial  strife  occurred 
in  the  Elizabethan  age,  French  traders  m  gold  and  ivory  found 
the  Portuguese  Dolice  on  the  Guinea  Coast  to  be  negligible ;  but 
poaching  in  the  slave  trade  was  a  harder  problem,  for  Spain 
held  firm  control  of  her  colonies  which  were  then  virtually  the 
world's  only  slave  market. 

The  test  of  this  was  made  by  Sir  John  Hawkins  who  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career  as  a  great  English  sea  captain  had 
informed  himself  in  the  Canary  Islands  of  the  Afro-American 
opportunity  awaiting  exploitation.     Backed  by  certain   English 

^  U.  B.  Phillips,  Plantation  and  Frontier  Documents,  printed  also  as 
vols.  I  and  II  of  the  Documentary  History  of  American  Industrial  Society 
(Cleveland,  O.,  1909),  II,  141,  142.  This  publication  will  be  cited  here- 
after as  PlantMtion  and  Frontier. 

20 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  2i 

financiers,  he  set  forth  in  1562  with  a  hundred  men  in  three  small 
ships,  and  after  procuring  in  Sierra  Leone,  "partly  by  the  sword 
and  partly  by  other  means,"  above  three  hundred  negroes  he 
sailed  to  Hispaniola  where  without  hindrance  from  the  authori- 
ties he  exchanged  them  for  colonial  produce.  "And  so,  with 
prosperous  success,  and  much  gain  to  himself  and  the  aforesaid 
adventurers,  he  came  home,  and  arrived  in  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, 1563."^  Next  year  with  170  men  in  four  ships  Haw- 
kins again  captured  as  many  Sierra  Leone  natives  as  he  could 
carry,  and  proceeded  to  peddle  them  in  the  Spanish  islands. 
When  the  authorities  interfered  he  coerced  them  by  show  of 
arms  and  seizure  of  hostages,  and  when  the  planters  demurred 
at  his  prices  he  brought  them  to  terms  through  a  mixture  of 
diplomacy  and  intimidation.  After  many  adventures  by  the 
way  he  reached  home,  as  the  chronicler  concludes,  "God  be 
thanked !  in  safety :  with  the  loss  of  twenty  persons  in  all  the 
voyage ;  as  with  great  profit  to  the  venturers  in  the  said  voyage, 
so  also  to  the  whole  realm,  in  bringing  home  both  gold,  silver, 
pearls,  and  other  jewels  in  great  store.  His  name  therefore  be 
praised  for  evermore !  Amen."  Before  two  years  more  had 
passed  Hawkins  put  forth  for  a  third  voyage,  this  time  with 
six  ships,  two  of  them  among  the  largest  then  afloat.  The  cargo 
of  slaves,  procured  by  aiding  a  Guinea  tribe  in  an  attack  upon 
its  neighbor,  had  been  duly  sold  in  the  Indies  when  dearth  of 
supplies  and  stress  of  weather  drove  the  fleet  into  the  Mexican 
port  of  San  Juan  de  Ulloa.  There  a  Spanish  fleet  of  thirteen 
ships  attacked  the  intruders,  capturing  their  treasure  ship  and 
three  of  her  consorts.  Only  the  Minion  under  Hawkins  and  the 
bark  Judith  under  the  young  Francis  Drake  escaped  to  carry  the 
harrowing  tale  to  England.  One  result  of  the  episode  was  that 
it  filled  Hawkins  and  Drake  with  desire  for  revenge  on  Spain, 
which  was  wreaked  in  due  time  but  in  European  waters.  An- 
other consequence  was  a  discouragement  of  English  slave  trad- 
ing for  nearly  a  century  to  follow. 

'  Hakluyt,  Voyages,  ed.  1589.  This  and  the  accounts  of  Hawkins'  later 
exploits  in  the  same  line  aye  reprinted  with  a  valuable  introduction  in  C. 
R.  Beazley,  ed..  Voyages  an4  Travels  (New  York,  1903),  I,  29-126. 


22 


AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 


The  defeat  of  the  Armada  in  1588  led  the  world  to  suspect 
the  decline  of  Spain's  maritime  power,  but  only  in  the  lapse  of 
decades  did  the  suspicion  of  her  helplessness  become  a  certainty. 
Meantime  Portugal  was  for  sixty  years  an  appanage  of  the 
Spanish  crown,  while  the  Netherlands  were  at  their  heroic  labor 
for  independence.  Thus  when  the  Dutch  came  to  prevail  at 
sea  in  the  early  seventeenth  century  the  Portuguese  posts  in 
Guinea  fell  their  prey,  and  in  1621  the  Dutch  West  India  Com- 
pany was  chartered  to  take  them  over.  Closely  identified  with 
the  Dutch  government,  this  company  not  only  founded  the  col- 
ony of  New  Netherland  and  endeavored  to  foster  the  employ- 
ment of  negro  slaves  there,  but  in  1634  it  seized  the  Spanish 
island  of  Curasao  near  the  Venezuelan  coast  and  made  it  a 
basis  for  smuggling  slaves  into  the  Spanish  dominions.  And 
now  the  English,  the  French  and  the  Danes  began  to  give  sys- 
tematic attention  to  the  African  and  West  Indian  opportunities, 
whether  in  the  form  of  buccaneering,  slave  trading  or  coloni- 
zation. 

The  revolt  of  Portugal  in  1640  brought  a  turning  point.  For 
a  quarter-century  thereafter  the  Spanish  government,  regarding 
the  Portuguese  as  rebels,  suspended  all  trade  relations  with 
them,  the  asiento  included.  But  the  trade  alternatives  remaining 
were  all  distasteful  to  Spain.  The  English  were  heretics;  the 
Dutch  were  both  heretics  and  rebels;  the  French  and  the  Danes 
were  too  weak  at  sea  to  handle  the  great  slave  trading  contract 
with  security ;  and  Spain  had  no  means  of  her  own  for  large  scale 
commerce.  The  upshot  was  that  the  carriage  of  slaves  to  the 
Spanish  colonies  was  wholly  interdicted  during  the  two  middle 
decades  of  the  century.  But  this  gave  the  smugglers  their  high- 
est opportunity.  The  Spanish  colonial  police  collapsed  under  the 
pressure  of  the  public  demand  for  slaves,  and  illicit  trading  be- 
came so  general  and  open  as  to  be  pseudo  legitimate.  Such  a 
boom  came  as  was  never  felt  before  under  Protestant  flags  in 
tropical  waters.  The  French,  in  spite  of  great  exertions,  were 
not  yet  able  to  rival  the  Dutch  and  English.  These  in  fact  had 
such  an  ascendency  that  when  in  1663  Spain  revived  the  asiento 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  23 

by  a  contract  with  two  Genoese,  the  contractors  must  needs 
procure  their  slaves  by  arrangement  with  Dutch  and  EngHsh 
who  delivered  them  at  Curasao  and  Jamaica.  Soon  after  this 
contract  expired  the  asiento  itself  was  converted  from  an  item 
of  Spanish  internal  policy  into  a  shuttlecock  of  international 
politics.  It  became  in  fact  the  badge  of  maritime  supremacy, 
possessed  now  by  the  Dutch,  now  by  the  French  in  the  greatest 
years  of  Louis  XIV,  and  finally  by  the  English  as  a  trophy  in 
the  treaty  of  Utrecht, 

By  this  time,  however,  the  Spanish  dominions  were  losing  their 
primacy  as  slave  markets.  Jamaica,  Barbados  and  other  Wind- 
ward Islands  under  the  English;  Hayti,  Martinique  and  Guade- 
loupe under  the  French,  and  Guiana  under  the  Dutch  were  all 
more  or  less  thriving  as  plantation  colonies,  while  Brazil,  Vir- 
ginia, Maryland  and  the  newly  founded  Carolina  were  begin- 
ning to  demonstrate  that  slave  labor  had  an  effective  calling  with- 
out as  well  as  within  the  Caribbean  latitudes.  The  closing  dec- 
ades of  the  seventeenth  century  were  introducing  the  heyday 
of  the  slave  trade,  and  the  English  were  preparing  for  their 
final   ascendency   therein. 

In  West  African  waters  in  that  century  no  international  law 
prevailed  but  that  of  might.  Hence  the  impulse  of  any  new 
country  to  enter  the  Guinea  trade  led  to  the  project  of  a  char- 
tered monopoly  company;  for  without  the  resources  of  share 
capital  sufficient  strength  could  not  be  had,  and  without  the 
monopoly  privilege  the  necessary  shares  could  not  be  sold.  The 
first  English  company  of  moment,  chartered  in  1618,  confined 
its  trade  to  gold  and  other  produce.  Richard  Jobson  while 
in  its  service  on  the  Gambia  was  offered  some  slaves  by  a  native 
trader.  "I  made  answer,"  Jobson  relates,  "we  were  a  people 
who  did  not  deal  in  any  such  commodities;  neither  did  we  buy 
or  sell  one  another,  or  any  that  had  our  own  shapes;  at  which 
he  seemed  to  marvel  much,  and  told  us  it  was  the  only  merchan- 
dize they  carried  down,  and  that  they  were  sold  to  white  men, 
who  earnestly  desired  them.  We  answered,  they  were  another 
kind  of  people,  different  from  us ;  but  for  our  part,  if  they  had 


24  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

no  otKer  commodities,  we  would  return  again."  *  This  company 
speedily  ending  its  life,  was  followed  by  another  in  163 1  with  a 
similarly  short  career;  and  in  1651  the  African  privilege  was 
granted  for  a  time  to  the  East  India  Company, 

Under  Charles  II  activities  were  resumed  vigorously  by  a 
company  chartered  in  1662;  but  this  promptly  fell  into  such  con- 
flict with  the  Dutch  that  its  capital  of  £122,000  vanished.  In 
a  drastic  reorganization  its  affairs  were  taken  over  by  a.  new 
corporation,  the  Royal  African  Company,  chartered  in  1672 
with  the  Duke  of  York  at  its  head  and  vested  in  its  turn  with 
monopoly  rights  under  the  English  flag  from  Sallee  on  the 
Moroccan  coast  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.*  For  two  decades 
this  company  prospered  greatly,  selling  some  two  thousand  slaves 
a  year  in  Jamaica  alone,  and  paying  large  cash  dividends  on 
its  i  100,000  capital  and  then  a  stock  dividend  of  300  per  cent. 
But  now  came  reverses  through  European  war  and  through  the 
competition  of  English  and  Yankee  private  traders  who  shipped 
slaves  legitimately  from  Madagascar  and  illicitly  from  Guinea. 
Now  came  also  a  clamor  from  the  colonies,  where  the  company 
was  never  popular,  and  from  England  also  where  oppression 
and  abuses  were  charged  against  it  by  would-be  free  traders. 
After  a  parliamentary  investigation  an  act  of  1697  restricted  the 
monopoly  by  empowering  separate  traders  to  traffic  in  Guinea 
upon  paying  to  the  company  for  the  maintenance  of  its  forts 
ten  per  cent,  on  the  value  of  the  cargoes  they  carried  thither  and 
a  percentage  on  certain  minor  exports  carried  thence. 

The  company  soon  fell  upon  still  more  evil  times,  and  met 
them  by  evil  practices.  To  increase  its  capital  it  offered  new 
stock  for  sale  at  reduced  prices  and  borrowed  money  for  divi- 
dends in  order  to  encourage  subscriptions.  The  separate  traders 
meanwhile  were  winning  nearly  all  its  trade.    In  1709-1710,  for 

'Richard  Jobson,  The  Golden  Trede  (London  1623,),  pp.  29,  87,  quoted 
in  James  Bandinel,  Some  Account  of  the  Trade  in  Slaves  from  Africa 
(London,  1842),  p.  43. 

*  The  financial  career  of  the  company  is  described  by  W.  R.  Scott,  "The 
Constitution  and  Finances  of  the  Royal  African  Company  of  England  till 
1720,"  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  VIIL  241-259. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  25 

example,  forty-four  of  their  vessels  made  voyages  as  compared 
with  but  three  ships  of  the  company,  and  Royal  African  stock 
sold  as  low  as  2^  on  the  iioo.  A  reorganization  in  1712  how- 
ever added  largely  to  the  company's  funds,  and  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht  brought  it  new  prosperity.  In  1730  at  length  Parliament 
relieved  the  separate  traders  of  all  dues,  substituting  a  public 
grant  of  £10,000  a  year  toward  the  maintenance  of  the  com- 
pany's forts.  For  twenty  years  more  the  company,  managed 
in  the  early  thirties  by  James  Oglethorpe,  kept  up  the  unequal 
contest  until  1751  when  it  was  dissolved. 

The  company  regime  under  the  several  flags  was  particularly 
dominant  on  the  coasts  most  esteemed  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury ;  and  in  that  century  they  reached  a  comity  of  their  own  on 
the  basis  of  live  and  let  live.  The  French  were  secured  in  the 
Senegal  sphere  of  influence  and  the  English  on  the  Gambia, 
while  on  the  Gold  Coast  the  Dutch  and  English  divided  the 
trade  between  them.  Here  the  two  headquarters  were  in  forts 
lying  within  sight  of  each  other:  El  Mina  of  the  Dutch,  and 
Cape  Coast  Castle  of  the  English.  Each  was  commanded  by  a 
governor  and  garrisoned  by  a  score  or  two  of  soldiers;  and 
each  with  its  outlying  factories  had  a  staff  of  perhaps  a  dozen 
factors,  as  many  sub-factors,  twice  as  many  assistants,  and  a 
few  bookkeepers  and  auditors,  as  well  as  a  corps  of  white  artisans 
and  an  abundance  of  native  interpreters,  boatmen,  carriers  and 
domestic  servants.  The  Dutch  and  English  stations  alternated 
in  a  series  east  and  west,  often  standing  no  further  than  a 
cannon-shot  apart.  Here  and  there  one  of  them  had  acquired  a 
slight  domination  which  the  other  respected;  but  in  the  case  of 
the  Coromantees  (or  Fantyns)  WilHam  Bosman,  a  Dutch  com- 
pany factor  about  1700,  wrote  that  both  companies  had  "equal 
power,  that  is  none  at  all.  For  when  these  people  are  inclined  to 
it  they  shut  up  the  passes  so  close  that  not  one  merchant  can  come 
from  the  inland  country  to  trade  with  us;  and  sometimes,  not 
content  with  this,  they  prevent  the  bringing  of  provisions  to  us 
till  we  have  made  peace  with  them."  The  tribe  was  in  fact  able 
to  exact  heavy  tribute  from  both  companies;  and  to  stretch  the 


26  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

treaty  engagements  at  will  to  its  own  advantage.^  Further  east- 
ward, on  the  densely  populated  Slave  Coast,  the  factories  were 
few  and  the  trade  virtually  open  to  all  comers.  Here,  as  was 
common  throughout  Upper  Guinea,  the  traits  and  the  trading 
practices  of  adjacent  tribes  were  likely  to  be  in  sharp  contrast. 
The  Popo  (or  Paw  Paw)  people,  for  example,  were  so  notorious 
for  cheating  and  thieving  that  few  traders  would  go  thither 
unless  prepared  to  carry  things  with  a  strong  hand.  The  Portu- 
guese alone  bore  their  grievances  without  retaliation,  Bosman 
said,  because  their  goods  were  too  poor  to  find  markets  else- 
where.®  But  Fidah  (Whydah),  next  door,  was  in  Bosman's  es- 
teem the  most  agreeable  of  all  places  to  trade  in.  The  people 
were  honest  and  polite,  and  the  red-tape  requirements  definite 
and  reasonable.  A  ship  captain  after  paying  for  a  license  and 
buying  the  king's  private  stock  of  slaves  at  somewhat  above 
the  market  price  would  have  the  news  of  his  arrival  spread 
afar,  and  at  a  given  time  the  trade  would  be  opened  with 
prices  fixed  in  advance  and  all  the  available  slaves  herded  in 
an  open  field.  There  the  captain  or  factor,  with  the  aid  of  a 
surgeon,  would  select  the  young  and  healthy,  who  if  the  pur- 
chaser were  the  Dutch  company  were  promptly  branded  to  pre- 
vent their  being  confused  in  the  crowd  before  being  carried  on 
shipboard.  The  Whydahs  were  so  industrious  in  the  trade,  with 
such  far  reaching  interior  connections,  that  they  could  deliver  a 
thousand  slaves  each  month.'^ 

Of  the  operations  on  the  Gambia  an  intimate  view  may  be 
had  from  the  journal  of  Francis  Moore,  a  factor  of  the  Royal 
African  Company  from  1730  to  1735.*  Here  the  Jolofs  on 
the  north  and  the  Mandingoes  on  the  south  and  west  were  divided 
into  tribes  or  kingdoms  fronting  from  five  to  twenty-five  leagues 
on  the  river,  while  tributary  villages  of  Arabic-speaking  Foulahs 
were  scattered  among  them.  In  addition  there  was  a  small  in- 
dependent population  of  mixed  breed,  with  very  slight  European 

'Bosman's  Guinea   (London,  1705),  reprinted  in  Pinkerton's  Voyages, 
XVI,  363. 

"Ibid.,  XVI,  474-476. 

'Ibid.,  XVI,  489-491. 

'Francis  Moore,  Travels  in  Africa  (London,  1738). 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  27 

infusion  but  styling  themselves  Portuguese  and  using  a  "bastard 
language"  known  locally  as  Creole.  Many  of  these  last  were 
busy  in  the  slave  trade.  The  Royal  African  headquarters,  with 
a  garrison  of  thirty  men,  were  on  an  island  in  the  river  some 
thirty  miles  from  its  mouth,  while  its  trading  stations  dotted 
the  shores  for  many  leagues  upstream,  for  no  native  king  was 
content  without  a  factory  near  his  "palace,"  The  slaves  bought 
were  partly  of  local  origin  but  were  mostly  brought  from 
long  distances  inland.  These  came  generally  in  strings 
or  coflfles  of  thirty  or  forty,  tied  with  leather  thongs  about  their 
necks  and  laden  with  burdens  of  ivory  and  corn  on  their  heads. 
Mungo  Park  when  exploring  the  hinterland  of  this  coast  in  1795- 
1797,  traveling  incidentally  with  a  slave  coffle  on  part  of  his 
journey,  estimated  that  in  the  Niger  Valley  generally  the  slaves 
outnumbered  the  free  by  three  to  one.^  But  as  Moore  observed, 
the  domestic  slaves  were  rarely  sold  in  the  trade,  mainly  for  fear 
it  would  cause  their  fellows  to  run  away.  When  captured  by 
their  master's  enemies  however,  they  were  likely  to  be  sent  to 
the  coast,  for  they  were  seldom  ransomed. 

The  diverse  goods  bartered  for  slaves  were  rated  by  units  of 
value  which  varied  in  the  several  trade  centers.  On  the  Gold 
Coast  it  was  a  certain  length  of  cowrie  shells  on  a  string;  at 
Loango  it  was  a  "piece"  which  had  the  value  of  a  common  gun 
or  of  twenty  pounds  of  iron;  at  Kakongo  it  was  twelve-  or  fif- 
teen-yard lengths  of  cotton  cloth  called  "goods" ;  ^°  while  on 
the  Gambia  it  was  a  bar  of  iron,  apparently  about  forty  pounds 
in  weight.  But  in  the  Gambia  trade  as  Moore  described  it  the 
unit  or  "bar"  in  rum,  cloth  and  most  other  things  became  depre- 
ciated until  in  some  commodities  it  was  not  above  a  shilling's 
value  in  English  money.  Iron  itself,  on  the  other  hand,  and  crys- 
tal beads,  brass  pans  and  spreadeagle  dollars  appreciated  in 
comparison.  These  accordingly  became  distinguished  as  the 
"heads  of  goods,"  and  the  inclusion  of  three  or  four  units  of 
them  was  required  in  the  forty  or  fifty  bars  of  miscellaneous 

*  Mungo  Park,  Travels  in  the  Interior  Districts  of  Africa  (4th  ed.,  Lon- 
don, 1800),  pp.  287,  428. 

"The  Abbe  Proyart,  History  of  Loango  (1776),  in  Pinkerton's  Voy- 
ages, XVI,  584-587. 


28  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

goods  making  up  the  price  of  a  prime  slave.'^^  In  previous  years 
grown  slaves  alone  had  brought  standard  prices ;  but  in  Moore's 
time  a  specially  strong  demand  for  boys  and  girls  in  the  markets 
of  Cadiz  and  Lisbon  had  raised  the  prices  of  these  almost  to 
a  parity.  All  defects  were  of  course  discounted.  Moore,  for 
example,  in  buying  a  slave  with  several  teeth  missing  made  the 
seller  abate  a  bar  for  each  tooth.  The  company  at  one  time 
forbade  the  purchase  of  slaves  from  the  self-styled  Portuguese 
because  they  ran  the  prices  up;  but  the  factors  protested  that 
these  dealers  would  promptly  carry  their  wares  to  the  separate 
traders,  and  the  prohibition  was  at  once  withdrawn. 

The  company  and  the  separate  traders  faced  different  prob- 
lems. The  latter  were  less  easily  able  to  adjust  their  merchan- 
dise to  the  market.  A  Rhode  Island  captain,  for  instance,  wrote 
his  owners  from  Anamabo  in  1736,  "heare  is  7  sails  of  us  rume 
men,  that  we  are  ready  to  devour  one  another,  for  our  case  is 
desprit" ;  while  four  years  afterward  another  wrote  after  trading 
at  the  same  port,  "I  have  repented  a  hundred  times  ye  lying 
in  of  them  dry  goods",  which  he  had  carried  in  place  of  the 
customary  rum.^^  Again,  a  veteran  Rhode  Islander  wrote  from 
Anamabo  in  1752,  "on  the  whole  I  never  had  so  much  trouble 
in  all  my  voiges",  and  particularized  as  follows :  "I  have  Gott 
on  bord  61  Slaves  and  upards  of  thirty  ounces  of  Goold,  and 
have  Gott  13  or  14  hhds  of  Rum  yet  Left  on  bord,  and  God  noes 
when  I  shall  Gett  Clear  of  it  ye  trade  is  so  very  Dull  it  is  actuly 
a  noof  to  make  a  man  Creasey  my  Cheef  mate  after  making 
foor  or  five  Trips  in  the  boat  was  taken  Sick  and  Remains  very 
bad  yett  then  I  sent  Mr.  Taylor,  and  he  got  not  well,  and 
three  more  of  my  men  has  [been]  sick.  ...  I  should  be  Glad  I 
coold  Com  Rite  home  with  my  slaves,  for  my  vesiel  will  not 
Last  to  proceed  farr  we  can  see  Day  Lite  al  Roond  her  bow 
under  Deck,  .  .  .  heare  Lyes  Captains  hamlet,  James,  Jepson, 
Carpenter,  Butler,  Lindsay ;  Gardner  is  Due ;  Ferguson  has  Gone 
to  Leward        all  these  is  Rum  ships."  ^' 

"  Francis  Moore,  Travels  in  Africa,  p.  45. 

^American  Historical  Record,  I  (1872),  314,  317. 

"  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  LXIX,  59,  60. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  29 

The  separate  traders  also  had  more  frequent  quarrels  with  the 
natives.  In  1732  a  Yankee  captain  was  killed  in  a  trade  dispute 
and  his  crew  set  adrift.  Soon  afterward  certain  Jolofs  took 
another  ship's  officers  captive  and  required  the  value  of  twenty 
slaves  as  ransom.  And  in  1733  the  natives  at  Yamyamacunda,  up 
the  Gambia,  sought  revenge  upon  Captain  Samuel  Moore  for 
having  paid  them  in  pewter  dollars  on  his  previous  voyage,  and 
were  quieted  through  the  good  offices  of  a  company  factor.**  The 
company  suffered  far  less  from  native  disorders,  for  a  threat 
of  removing  its  factory  would  bring  any  chief  to  terms.  In  1731, 
however,  the  king  of  Barsally  brought  a  troop  of  his  kinsmen  and 
subjects  to  the  Joar  factory  where  Moore  was  in  charge,  got 
drunk,  seized  the  keys  and  rifled  the  stores.*^  But  the  company's 
chief  trouble  was  with  its  own  factors.  The  climate  and  condi- 
tions were  so  trying  that  illness  was  frequent  and  insanity  and 
suicide  occasional ;  and  the  isolation  encouraged  fraudulent  prac- 
tices. It  was  usually  impossible  to  tell  the  false  from  the  true 
in  the  reports  of  the  loss  of  goods  by  fire  and  flood,  theft  and 
rapine,  mildew  and  white  ants,  or  the  loss  of  slaves  by  death  or 
mutmy.  The  expense  of  the  salary  list,  ship  hire,  provisions 
and  merchandise  was  heavy  and  continuous,  while  the  returns 
were  precarious  to  a  degree.  Not  often  did  such  great  wars  occur 
as  the  Dahomey  invasion  of  the  Whidah  country  in  1726*^  and 
the  general  fighting  of  the  Gambia  peoples  in  1733-1734*^  to  glut 
the  outward  bound  ships  with  slave  cargoes.  As  a  rule  the  com- 
pany's advantage  of  steady  markets  and  friendly  native  relations 
appears  to  have  been  more  than  offset  by  the  freedom  of  the  sepa- 
rate traders  from  fixed  charges  and  the  necessity  of  dependence 
upon  lazy  and  unfaithful  employees. 

Instead  of  jogging  along  the  coast,  as  many  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  do,  and  casting  anchor  here  and  there  upon  sighting  sig- 
nal smokes  raised  by  natives  who  had  slaves  to  sell,**  the  sepa- 
rate traders  began  before  the  close  of  the  colonial  period  to  get 

"Moore,  pp.  112,  164,  182. 
^'Ibid.,  p.  82. 

"  William  Snelgrave,  A  New  Account  of  Some  Parts  of  Guinea  and  thi 
Slave  Trade  (London,  1734),  pp.  8-32. 
"Moore,  p.  157. 
"  Snelgrave,  introduction. 


30  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

their  slaves  from  white  factors  at  the  "castles,"  which  were  then 
a  relic  from  the  company  regime.  So  advantageous  was  this  that 
in  1772  a  Newport  brig  owned  by  Colonel  Wanton  cleared  £500 
on  her  voyage,  and  next  year  the  sloop  Adventure,  also  of  New- 
port, Christopher  and  George  Champlin  owners,  made  such 
speedy  trade  that  after  losing  by  death  one  slave  out  of  the 
ninety-five  in  her  cargo  she  landed  the  remainder  in  prime  order 
at  Barbados  and  sold  them  immediately  in  one  lot  at  ^35  per 
head.i^ 

In  Lower  Guinea  the  Portuguese  held  an  advantage,  partly 
through  the  influence  of  the  Catholic  priests.  The  Capuchin 
missionary  Merolla,  for  example,  relates  that  while  he  was  in 
service  at  the  mouth  of  the  Congo  in  1685  word  came  that  the 
college  of  cardinals  had  commanded  the  missionaries  in  Africa 
to  combat  the  slave  trade.  Promptly  deciding  this  to  be  a  hope- 
less project,  Merolla  and  his  colleagues  compromised  with  their 
instructions  by  attempting  to  restrict  the  trade  to  ships  of  Cath- 
olic nations  and  to  the  Dutch  who  were  then  supplying  Spain 
under  the  asiento.  No  sooner  had  the  chiefs  in  the  district  agreed 
to  this  than  a  Dutch  trading  captain  set  things  -awry  by  spread- 
ing Protestant  doctrine  among  the  natives,  declaring  baptism  to 
be  the  only  sacrament  required  for  salvation,  and  confession  to 
be  superfluous.  The  priests  then  put  all  the  Dutch  under  the 
ban,  but  the  natives  raised  a  tumult  saying  that  the  Portuguese, 
the  only  Catholic  traders  available,  not  only  paid  low  prices  in 
poor  goods  but  also  aspired  to  a  political  domination.  The  crisis 
wa<s  relieved  by  a  timely  plague  of  small-pox  which  the  priests 
declared  and  the  natives  agreed  was  a  divinely  sent  punishment 
for  their  contumacy, — and  for  the  time  at  least,  the  exclusion  of 
heretical  traders  was  made  effective.-"  The  EngHsh  appear  never 
to  have  excelled  the  Portuguese  on  the  Congo  and  southward 
except  perhaps  about  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  markets  most  frequented  by  the  English  and  American 
separate  traders  lay  on  the  great  middle  stretches  of  the  coast 

^  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  LXIX,  398,  429. 
'"Jerom  Merolla  da  Sorrente,   Voyage  to  Congo   (translated  from  the 
Italian),  in  Pinkerton's  Voyages^  XVI,  253-260. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  31 

— Sierra  Leone,  the  Grain  Coast  (Liberia),  the  Ivory,  Gold  and 
Slave  Coasts,  the  Oil  Rivers  as  the  Niger  Delta  was  then  called, 
Cameroon,  Gaboon  and  Loango.  The  swarm  of  their  ships  was 
particularly  great  in  the  Gulf  of  Guinea  upon  whose  shores  the 
vast  fan-shaped  hinterland  poured  its  exiles  along  converging 
lines.  ^> 

The  coffles  came  from  distances  ranging  to  a  thousand  miles 
or  more,  on  rivers  and  paths  whose  shore  ends  the  European 
traders  could  see  but  did  not  find  inviting.  These  paths,  always 
of  single-file  narrowness,  tortuously  winding  to  avoid  fallen 
trees  and  bad  ground,  never  straightened  even  when  obstructions 
had  rotted  and  gone,  branching  and  crossing  in  endless  network, 
penetrating  jungles  and  high-grass  prairies,  passing  villages  that 
were  and  villages  that  had  been,  skirting  the  lairs  of  savage  beasts 
and  the  haunts  of  cannibal  men,  beset  with  drought  and  famine, 
storm  and  flood,  were  threaded  only  by  negroes,  bearing  arms 
or  bearing  burdens.  Many  of  the  slaves  fell  exhausted  on  the 
paths  and  v^^ere  cut  out  of  the  coffles  to  die.  The  survivors  were 
sorted  by  the  purchasers  on  the  coast  into  the  fit  and  the  unfit,  the 
latter  to  live  in  local  slavery  or  to  meet  either  violent  or  lingering 
deaths,  the  former  to  be  taken  shackled  on  board  the  strange 
vessels  of  the  strange  white  men  and  carried  to  an  unknown  fate. 
The  only  consolations  were  that  the  future  could  hardly  be  worse 
than  the  recent  past,  that  misery  had  plenty  of  company,  and  that 
things  were  interesting  by  the  way.  The  combination  of  resig- 
nation and  curiosity  was  most  helpful. 

It  was  reassuring  to  these  victims  to  see  an  occasional  Amer- 
ican negro  serving  in  the  crew  of  a  slaver  and  to  know  that  a 
few  specially  favored  tribesmen  had  returned  home  with  vivid 
stories  from  across  the  sea.  On  the  Gambia  for  example  there 
was  Job  Ben  Solomon  who  during  a  brief  slavery  in  Maryland 
attracted  James  Oglethorpe's  attention  by  a  letter  written  in  Ara- 
bic, was  bought  from  his  master,  carried  to  England,  presented 
at  court,  loaded  with  gifts  and  sent  home  as  a  freeman  in  1734 
in  a  Royal  African  ship  with  credentials  requiring  the  governor 
and  factors  to  show  him  every  respect.  Thereafter,  a  celebrity 
on  the  river,  he  spread  among  his  fellow  Foulahs  and  the  neigh- 


32  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

boring  Jolofs  and  Mandingoes  his  cordial  praises  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation. 2^  And  on  the  Gold  Coast  there  was  Amissa  to  tes- 
tify to  British  justice,  for  he  had  shipped  as  a  hired  sailor  on  a 
Liverpool  slaver  in  1774,  had  been  kidnapped  by  his  employer 
and  sold  as  a  slave  in  Jamaica,  but  had  been  redeemed  by  the 
king  of  Anamaboe  and  brought  home  with  an  award  by  Lord 
Mansfield's  court  in  London  of  isoo  damages  collected  from  the 
slaving  captain  who  had  wronged  him.^^ 

The  bursting  of  the  South  Sea  bubble  in  1720  shifted  the  bulk 
of  the  separate  trading  from  London  to  the  rival  city  of  Bristol. 
But  the  removal  of  the  duties  in  1730  brought  the  previously 
unimportant  port  of  Liverpool  into  the  field  with  such  vigor  that 
ere  long  she  had  the  larger  half  of  all  the  English  slave  trade. 
Her  merchants  prospered  by  their  necessary  parsimony.  The 
wages  they  paid  were  the  lowest,  and  the  commissions  and  extra 
allowances  they  gave  in  their  early  years  were  nil.^^  By  1753 
her  ships  in  the  slave  traffic  numbered  eighty-seven,  totaling  about 
eight  thousand  tons  burthen  and  rated  to  carry  some  twenty-five 
thousand  slaves.  Eight  of  these  vessels  were  trading  on  the 
Gambia,  thirty-eight  on  the  Gold  and  Slave  Coasts,  five  at  Benin, 
three  at  New  Calabar,  twelve  at  Bonny,  eleven  at  Old  Calabar, 
and  ten  in  Angola.^*  For  the  year  1771  the  number  of  slavers 
bound  from  Liverpool  was  reported  at  one  hundred  and  seven 
with  a  capacity  of  29,250  negroes,  while  fifty-eight  went  from 
London  rated  to  carry  8,136,  twenty-five  from  Bristol  to  carry 
8,810,  and  five  from  Lancaster  with  room  for  950.  Of  this  total 
of  195  ships  43  traded  in  Senegambia,  29  on  the  Gold  Coast,  56 
on  the  Slave  Coast,  63  in  the  bights  of  Benin  and  Biafra,  and  4 
in  Angola.  In  addition  there  were  sixty  or  seventy  slavers  from 
North  America  and  the  West  Indies,  and  these  were  yearly  in- 
creasing.^'*  By  1801  the  Liverpool  ships  had  increased  to  150, 
with  capacity  for  52,557  slaves  according  to  the  reduced  rating 

"  Francis  Moore,  Travels  in  Africa,  pp.  69,  202-203. 

*"  Gomer  Williams,  History  of  the  Liverpool  Privateers,  with  an  Account 
of  the  Liverpool  Slave  Trade  (London,  1897),  PP-  5^3,  564- 

"Ibid.,  p.  471,  quoting  A  General  and  Descriptive  History  of  Liver- 
pool (1795)- 

**Ibid.,  p.  472  and  appendix  7. 

"Edward  Long,  History  of  Jamaica  (London,  1774),  p.  492  note. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  33 

of  five  slaves  to  three  tons  of  burthen  as  required  by  the  par- 
liamentary act  of  1788.  About  half  of  these  traded  in  the  Gulf 
of  Guinea,  and  half  in  the  ports  of  Angola.^^  The  trade  in  Amer- 
ican vessels,  particularly  those  of  New  England,  was  also  large. 
The  career  of  the  town  of  Newport  in  fact  was  a  small  scale 
replica  of  Liverpool's.  But  acceptable  statistics  of  the  Amer- 
ican ships  are  lacking. 

The  ship  captains  in  addition  to  their  salaries  generally  re- 
ceived commissions  of  "4  in  104,"  on  the  gross  sales,  and  also 
had  the  privilege  of  buying,  transporting  and  selling  specified 
numbers  of  slaves  on  their  private  account.  When  surgeons 
were  carried  they  also  were  allowed  commissions  and  privileges 
at  a  smaller  rate,  and  "privileges"  were  often  allowed  the  mates 
likewise.  The  captains  generally  carried  more  or  less  definite  in- 
structions. Ambrose  Lace,  for  example,  master  of  the  Liverpool 
ship  Marquis  of  Granby  bound  in  1762  for  Old  Calabar,  was  or- 
dered to  combine  with  any  other  ships  on  the  river  to  keep  down 
rates,  to  buy  550  young  and  healthy  slaves  and  such  ivory  as  his 
surplus  cargo  would  purchase,  and  to  guard  against  fire,  fever 
and  attack.  When  laden  he  was  to  carry  the  slaves  to  agents 
in  the  West  Indies,  and  thence  bring  home  according  to  oppor- 
tunity sugar,  cotton,  coffee,  pimento,  mahogany  and  rum,  and 
the  balance  of  the  slave  cargo  proceeds  in  bills  of  ex- 
change.^^  Simeon  Potter,  master  of  a  Rhode  Island  slaver  about 
the  same  time,  was  instructed  by  his  owners :  "Make  yr  Cheaf 
Trade  with  The  Blacks  and  little  or  none  with  the  white  people  if 
possible  to  be  avoided.  Worter  yr  Rum  as  much  as  possible  and 
sell  as  much  by  the  short  mesuer  as  you  can,"  And  again  :  "Order 
them  in  the  Bots  to  worter  thear  Rum,  as  the  proof  will  Rise  by 
the  Rum  Standing  in  ye  Son."^*  As  to  the  care  of  the  slave 
cargo  a  Massachusetts  captain  was  instructed  in  1785  as  follows: 
"No  people  require  more  kind  and  tender  treatment  to  exhil- 
arate their  spirits  than  the  Africans ;  and  while  on  the  one  hand 

"Gomer  Williams,  Appendix  13. 
"^Ibid.,  pp.  486-489. 

*  W.  B.  Weeden,  Econonvic  and  Social  History  of  New  England  (Bos- 
ton [i8go]),  11,465. 


34  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

you  are  attentive  to  this,  remember  that  on  the  other  hand  too 
much  circumspection  cannot  be  observed  by  yourself  and  people 
to  prevent  their  taking  advantage  of  such  treatment  by  insurrec- 
tion, etc.  When  you  consider  that  on  the  health  of  your  slaves, 
almost  your  whole  voyage  depends — for  all  other  risques  bi4t 
mortality,  seizures  and  bad  debts  the  underwriters  are  account- 
able for — you  will  therefore  particularly  attend  to  smoking  your 
vessel,  washing  her  with  vinegar,  to  the  clarifying  your  water 
with  lime  or  brimstone,  and  to  cleanliness  among  your  own  peo- 
ple as  well  as  among  the  slaves."  ^^ 

Ships  were  frequently  delayed  for  many  months  on  the  pes- 
tilent coast,  for  after  buying  their  licenses  in  one  kingdom  and 
finding  trade  slack  there  they  could  ill  afford  to  sail  for  another 
on  the  uncertain  chance  of  a  more  speedy  supply.  Sometimes 
when  weary  of  higgling  the  market,  they  tried  persuasion  by  force 
of  arms;  but  in  some  instances  as  at  Bonny,  in  1757,^°  this  re- 
sulted in  the  victory  of  the  natives  and  the  destruction  of  the 
ships.  In  general  the  captains  and  their  owners  appreciated  the 
necessity  of  patience,  expensive  and  even  deadly  as  that  might 
prove  to  be. 

The  chiefs  were  eager  to  foster  trade  and  cultivate  good  will, 
for  it  brought  them  pompous  trappings  as  well  as  useful  goods. 
"Grandy  King  George"  of  Old  Calabar,  for  example,  asked  of 
his  friend  Captain  Lace  a  mirror  six  feet  square,  an  arm  chair 
""for  my  salf  to  sat  in,"  a  gold  mounted  cane,  a  red  and  a  blue 
coat  with  gold  lace,  a  case  of  razors,  pewter  plates,  brass  flagons, 
knives  and  forks,  bullet  and  cannon-ball  molds,  and  sailcloth  for 
his  canoes,  along  with  many  other  things  for  use  in  trade.^^ 

The  typical  New  England  ship  for  the  slave  trade  was  a  sloop, 
schooner  or  barkentine  of  about  fifty  tons  burthen,  which  when 
engaged  in  ordinary  freighting  would  have  but  a  single  deck. 
For  a  slaving  voyage  a  second  flooring  was  laid  some  three  feet 
below  the  regular  deck,  the  space  between   forming  the  slave 

^  G.  H.  Moore,  Notes  on  the  History  of  Slavery  in  Massachusetts  (New 
York,  1866),  pp.  66,  67,  citing  J.  O.  Felt,  Annals  of  Salem,  2d  ed.,  II,  289, 
290. 

"^Gomer  Williams,  pp.  481,  482. 

''Ibid.,  pp.  545-547- 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  35 

quarters.  Such  a  vessel  was  handled  by  a  captain,  two  mates, 
and  from  three  to  six  men  and  boys.  It  is  curious  that  a  vessel 
of  this  type,  with  capacity  in  the  hold  for  from  100  to  120  hogs- 
heads of  rum  was  reckoned  by  the  Rhode  Islanders  to  be  "full 
bigg  for  dispatch,"  ^^  while  among  the  Liverpool  slave  traders 
such  a  ship  when  offered  for  sale  could  not  find  a  pur- 
chaser.^* The  reason  seems  to  have  been  that  dry-goods  and 
sundries  required  much  more  cargo  space  for  the  same  value  than 
did  rum. 

The  English  vessels  were  generally  twice  as  great  of  burthen 
and  with  twice  the  height  in  their  'tween  decks.  But  this  did 
not  mean  that  the  slaves  could  stand  erect  in  their  quarters  ex- 
cept along  the  center  line ;  for  when  full  cargoes  were  expected 
platforms  of  six  or  eight  feet  in  width  were  laid  on  each  side, 
halving  the  'tween  deck  height  and  nearly  doubling  the  floor 
space  on  which  the  slaves  were  to  be  stowed.  Whatever  the 
size  of  the  ship,  it  loaded  slaves  if  it  could  get  them  to  the  limit 
of  its  capacity.  Bosman  tersely  said,  "they  lie  as  close  together 
as  it  is  possible  to  be  crowded."  ^*  The  women's  room  was  di- 
vided from  the  men's  by  a  bulkhead,  and  in  time  of  need  the 
captain's  cabin  might  be  converted  into  a  hospital. 

While  the  ship  was  taking  on  slaves  and  African  provisions  ( 
and  water  the  negroes  were  generally  kept  in  a  temporary  stock- 
ade on  deck  for  the  sake  of  fresh  air.  But  on  departure  for 
the  "middle  passage,"  as  the  trip  to  America  was  called  by  rea- 
son of  its  being  the  second  leg  of  the  ship's  triangular  voyage  in 
the  trade,  the  slaves  were  kept  below  at  night  and  in  foul  weather, 
and  were  allowed  above  only  in  daylight  for  food,  air  and  exer- 
cise while  the  crew  and  some  of  the  slaves  cleaned  the  quarters 
and  swabbed  the  floors  with  vinegar  as  a  disinfectant.  The  negro 
men  were  usually  kept  shackled  for  the  first  part  of  the  passage 
until  the  chances  of  mutiny  and  return  to  Africa  dwindled  and 
the  captain's  fears  gave  place  to  confidence.     On  various  occa- 

•*  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  Collections,  LXIX,  524. 

**  Ibid.,  500. 

**Bosman's  Guinea,  in  Pinkerton's  Voxaaes,  XVI,  490. 


36  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

sions  when  attacks  of  privateers  were  to  be  repelled  weapons 
were  issued  and  used  by  the  slaves  in  loyal  defense  of  the  ves- 
sel.^'' Systematic  villainy  in  the  handling  of  the  human  cargo 
was  perhaps  not  so  characteristic  in  this  trade  as  in  the  transport 
of  poverty-stricken  white  emigrants.  Henry  Laurens,  after  with- 
drawing from  African  factorage  at  Charleston  because  of  the 
barbarities  inflicted  by  some  of  the  participants  in  the  trade,  wrote 
in  1768:  "Yet  I  never  saw  an  instance  of  cruelty  in  ten  or 
twelve  years'  experience  in  that  branch  equal  to  the  cruelty  ex- 
ercised upon  those  poor  Irish.  .  .  .  Self  interest  prompted  the 
baptized  heathen  to  take  some  care  of  their  wretched  slaves  for 
a  market,  but  no  other  care  was  taken  of  those  poor  Protestant 
Christians  from  Ireland  but  to  deliver  as  many  as  possible  alive 
on  shoar  upon  the  cheapest  terms,  no  matter  how  they  fared  upon 
the  voyage  nor  in  what  condition  they  were  landed."  ^^ 

William  Snelgrave,  long  a  ship  captain  in  the  trade,  relates 
that  he  was  accustomed  when  he  had  taken  slaves  on  board  to 
acquaint  them  through  his  interpreter  that  they  were  destined  to 
till  the  ground  in  America  and  not  to  be  eaten ;  that  if  any  per- 
son on  board  abused  them  they  were  to  complain  to  the  inter- 
preter and  the  captain  would  give  them  redress,  but  if  they 
struck  one  of  the  crew  or  made  any  disturbance  they  must  ex- 
pect to  be  severely  punished.  Snelgrave  nevertheless  had  ex- 
perience of  three  mutinies  in  his  career ;  and  Coromantees  figured 
so  prominently  in  these  that  he  never  felt  secure  when  men  of 
that  stock  were  in  his  vessel,  for,  he  said,  "I  knew  many  of  these 
Cormantine  negroes  despised  punishment  and  even  death  it- 
self." In  one  case  when  a  Coromantee  had  brained  a  sentry  he 
was  notified  by  Snelgrave  that  he  was  to  die  in  the  sight  of  his 
fellows  at  the  end  of  an  hour's  time.  "He  answered,  'He  must 
confess  it  was  a  rash  action  in  him  to  kill  him ;  but  he  desired  me 
to  consider  that  if  I  put  him  to  death  I  should  lose  all  the  money 
I  had  paid  for  him.'  "    When  the  captain  professed  himself  un- 

"E.  g.,  Gomer  Williams,  pp.  560,  561. 

"D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens  (l<iev/  York,  1915),  PP.  67,  6& 
For  the  tragic  sufferings  of  an  English  convict  shipment  in  1768  see  Plat* 
tation  and  Frontier,  I,  372-373. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  37 

moved  by  this  argument  the  negro  spent  his  last  moments  assur- 
ing his  fellows  that  his  life  was  safe.^^ 

The  discomfort  in  the  densely  packed  quarters  of  the  slave 
ships  may  be  imagined  by  any  who  have  sailed  on  tropic  seas. 
With  seasickness  added  it  was  wretched;  when  dysentery  pre- 
vailed it  became  frightful;  if  water  or  food  ran  short  the  suf- 
fering was  almost  or  quite  beyond  endurance;  and  in  epidemics 
of  scurvy,  small-pox  or  ophthalmia  the  misery  reached  the  limit 
of  human  experience.  The  average  voyage  however  was  rapid 
and  smooth  by  virtue  of  the  steadily  blowing  trade  winds,  the 
food  if  coarse  was  generally  plenteous  and  wholesome,  and  the 
sanitation  fairly  adequate.  In  a  word,  under  stern  and  often 
brutal  discipline,  and  with  the  poorest  accommodations,  the 
slaves  encountered  the  then  customary  dangers  and  hardships  of 
the  sea.^^ 

Among  the  disastrous  voyages  an  example  was  that  of  the 
Dutch  West  India  Company's  ship  St.  John  in  1659.  After  buy- 
ing laves  at  Bonny  in  April  and  May  she  beat  about  the  coast 
in  search  of  provisions  but  found  barely  enough  for  daily  con- 
sumption until  at  the  middle  of  August  on  the  island  of  Amebo 
she  was  able  to  buy  hogs,  beans,  cocoanuts  and  oranges.  Mean- 
while bad  food  had  brought  dysentery,  the  surgeon,  the  cooper 
and  a  sailor  had  died,  and  the  slave  cargo  was  daily  diminishing. 
Five  weeks  of  sailing  then  carried  the  ship  across  the  Atlantic, 
where  she  put  into  Tobago  to  refill  her  leaking  water  casks. 
Sailing  thence  she  struck  a  reef  near  her  destination  at  Curagao 
and  was  abandoned  by  her  officers  and  crew.  Finally  a  sloop 
sent  by  the  Curagao  governor  to  remove  the  surviving  slaves  was 
captured  by  a  privateer  with  them  on  board.  Of  the  195  negroes 
comprising  the  cargo  on  June  30,  from  one  to  five  died  nearly 

"  Snelgrave,  Guinea  and  the  Slave  Trade  (London,  1734),  pp.  162-185. 
Snelgrave's  book  also  contains  vivid  accounts  of  tribal  wars,  human  sacri- 
fices, traders'  negotiations  and  pirate  captures  on  the  Grain  and  Slave 
Coasts. 

"*  Voluminous  testimony  in  regard  to  conditions  on  the  middle  passage 
was  published  by  Parliament  and  the  Privy  Council  in  1789-1791.  Sum- 
maries from  it  may  be  found  in  T.  F.  Buxton,  The  African  Slave  Trade 
and  the  Remedy  (London,  1840),  part  I,  chap.  2;  and  in  W.  O.  Blake, 
History  of  Slavery  and  the  Slave  Trade  (Columbus,  Ohio,  1859),  chaps. 
9,  10. 


38  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

every  day,  and  one  leaped  overboard  to  his  death.  At  the  end 
of  the  record  on  October  29  the  slave  loss  had  reached  no,  with 
the  mortality  rate  nearly  twice  as  high  among  the  men  as  among 
the  women.^^  About  the  same  time,  on  the  other  hand,  Captain 
John  Newton  of  Liverpool,  who  afterwards  turned  preacher, 
made  a  voyage  without  losing  a  sailor  or  a  slave.*"  The  mortal- 
ity on  the  average  ship  may  be  roughly  conjectured  from  the 
available  data  at  eight  or  ten  per  cent. 

Details  of  characteristic  outfit,  cargo,  and  expectations  in  the 
New  England  branch  of  trade  may  be  had  from  an  estimate 
made  in  1752  for  a  projected  voyage,*^  A  sloop  of  sixty  tons, 
valued  at  £300  sterling,  was  to  be  Dverhauled  and  refitted,  armed, 
furnished  with  handcuffs,  medicines  and  miscellaneous  chandlery 
at  a  cost  of  £65,  and  provisioned  for  £50  more.  Its  officers  and 
crew,  seven  hands  all  told,  were  to  draw  aggregate  wages  of  iio 
per  month  for  an  estimated  period  of  one  year.  Laden  with  eight 
thousand  gallons  of  rum  at  i,y,  8c?,  per  gallon  and  with  forty-five 
barrels,  tierces  and  hogsheads  of  bread,  flour,  beef,  pork,  tar, 
tobacco,  tallow  and  sugar — all  at  an  estimated  cost  of  £775 — it 
was  to  sail  for  the  Gold  Coast,  There,  after  paying  the  local 
charges  from  the  cargo,  some  35  slave  men  were  to  be  bought  at 
100  gallons  per  head,  15  women  at  85  gallons,  and  15  boys  and 
girls  at  65  gallons ;  and  the  residue  of  the  rum  and  miscellaneous 
cargo  was  expected  to  bring  some  seventy  ounces  of  gold  in 
exchange  as  well  as  to  procure  food  supplies  for  the  westward 
voyage.  Recrossing  the  Atlantic,  with  an  estimated  death  loss 
of  a  man,  a  woman  and  two  children,  the  surviving  slaves  were  to 
be  sold  in  Jamaica  at  about  £21,  £18,  and  £14  for  the  respective 
classes.  Of  these  proceeds  about  one-third  was  to  be  spent 
for  a  cargo  of  105  hogsheads  of  molasses  at  8d.  per  gallon,  and 

**£.  B.  O'Callaghan  ed.,  Voyages  of  the  Slavers  St.  John  and  Anns  of 
Amsterdam  (Albany,  N.  Y.,  1867),  pp.  1-13, 

*"Gomer  Williams,  p.  515. 

*^"An  estimate  of  a  voyage  from  Rhode  Island  to  the  Coast  of  Guinea 
and  from  thence  to  Jamaica  and  so  back  to  Rhode  Island  for  a  sloop  of 
60  Tons."  The  authorities  of  Yale  University,  which  possesses  the  manu- 
script^ have  kindly  permitted  the  publication  of  these  data.  The  estimates 
in  Rhode  Island  and  Jamaica  currencies,  which  were  then  depreciated,  as 
stated  in  the  document,  to  twelve  for  one  and  seven  for  five  sterling  re- 
spectively, are  here  changed  into  their  approximate  sterling  equivalents. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  39 

the  rest  of  the  money  remitted  to  London,  wbither  the  gold  dust 
was  also  to  be  sent.  The  molasses  upon  reaching  Newport  was 
expected  to  bring  twice  as  much  as  it  had  cost  in  the  tropics.  Af- 
ter deducting  factor's  commissions  of  from  2^  to  5  per  cent,  on 
all  sales  and  purchases,  and  of  "4  in  104"  on  the  slave  sales  as  the 
captain's  allowance,  after  providing  for  insurance  at  four  per 
cent,  on  ship  and  cargo  for  each  leg  of  the  voyage,  and  for  leak- 
age of  ten  per  cent,  of  the  rum  and  five  per  cent,  of  the  molasses, 
and  after  charging  off  the  whole  cost  of  the  ship's  outfit  and  one- 
third  of  her  original  value,  there  remained  the  sum  of  £357,  8^-.  2d. 
as  the  expected  profits  of  the  voyage. 

As  to  the  gross  volume  of  the  trade,  there  are  few  statistics. 
As  early  as  1734  one  of  the  captains  engaged  in  it  estimated  that 
a  maximum  of  seventy  thousand  slaves  a  year  had  already  been 
attained.^^  For  the  next  half  century  and  more  each  passing 
year  probably  saw  between  fifty  thousand  and  a  hundred  thou- 
sand shipped.  The  total  transportation  from  first  to  last  may 
well  have  numbered  more  than  five  million  souls.  Prior  to  the 
nineteenth  century  far  more  negro  than  white  colonists  crossed 
the  seas,  though  less  than  one  tenth  of  all  the  blacks  brought  to  the 
western  world  appear  to  have  been  landed  on  the  North  American 
continent.  Indeed,  a  statistician  has  reckoned,  though  not  con- 
vincingly, that  in  the  whole  period  before  1810  these  did  not  ex 
ceed  385,500." 

In  selling  the  slave  cargoes  in  colonial  ports  the  traders  of 
course  wanted  minimum  delay  and  maximum  prices.  But  as  a 
rule  quickness  and  high  returns  were  not  mutually  compatible. 
The  Royal  African  Company  tended  to  lay  chief  stress  upon 
promptness  of  sale.  Thus  at  the  end  of  1672  it  announced  that 
if  persons  would  contract  to  receive  whole  cargoes  upon  their  ar- 
rival and  to  accept  all  slaves  between  twelve  and  forty  years  of 
age  who  were  able  to  go  over  the  ship's  side  unaided  they  would 
be  supplied  at  the  rate  of  £15  per  head  in  Barbados,  ii6  in  Nevis, 

**  Snelgrave,  Guinea  and  the  Slave  Trade,  p.  159. 
*^  H.  C.  Carey,  The  Slave  Trade,  Domestic  and  Foreign  (Philadelphia, 
1853),  chap.  3. 


p  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

ii7  in  Jamaica,  and  ii8  in  Virginia.**  The  colonists  were  for  a 
time  disposed  to  accept  this  arrangement  where  they  could.  For 
example  Charles  Calvert,  governor  of  Maryland,  had  already 
written  Lord  Baltimore  in  1664:  "I  have  endeavored  to  see  if 
I  could  find  as  many  responsible  men  that  would  engage  to  take 
100  or  200  neigros  every  year  from  the  Royall  Company  at  that 
rate  mentioned  in  your  lordship's  letter;  but  I  find  that  we  are 
nott  men  of  estates  good  enough  to  undertake  such  a  buisnesse, 
but  could  wish  we  were  for  we  are  naturally  inclined  to  love 
neigros  if  our  purses  could  endure  it."  *^  But  soon  complaints 
arose  that  the  slaves  delivered  on  contract  were  of  the  poorest 
quality,  while  the  better  grades  were  withheld  for  other  means 
of  sale  at  higher  prices.  Quarrels  also  developed  between  the 
company  on  the  one  hand  and  the  colonists  and  their  legislatures 
on  the  other  over  the  rating  of  colonial  moneys  and  the  obstruc- 
tions placed  by  law  about  the  collection  of  debts ;  and  the  colo- 
nists proceeded  to  give  all  possible  encouragement  to  the  sepa- 
rate traders,  legal  or  illegal  as  their  traffic  might  be.*^ 

Most  of  the  sales,  in  the  later  period  at  least,  were  without 
previous  contract.  A  practice  often  followed  in  the  British  West 
Indian  ports  was  to  advertise  that  the  cargo  of  a  vessel  just  ar- 
rived would  be  sold  on  board  at  an  hour  scheduled  and  at  a  uni- 
form price  announced  in  the  notice.  At  the  time  set  there  would 
occur  a  great  scramble  of  planters  and  dealers  to  grab  the  choicest 
slaves.  A  variant  from  this  method  was  reported  in  1670  from 
Guadeloupe,  where  a  cargo  brought  in  by  the  French  African 
company  was  first  sorted  into  grades  of  prime  men,  (pieces 
d'Inde),  prime  women,  boys  and  girls  rated  at  two-thirds  of 
prime,  and  children  rated  at  one-half.  "To  each  slave  was  at- 
tached a  ticket  bearing  a  number,  while  a  corresponding  ticket 
was  deposited  in  one  of  four  boxes  according  to  the  grade.  At 
prices  then  announced  for  the  several  grades,  the  planters  bought 
the  privilege  of  drawing  tickets  from  the  appropriate  boxes  and 

**  E.  D.  Collins,  "Studies  in  the  Colonial  Policy  of  England,  1672-1680," 
in  the  American  Historical  Association  Report  for  1901,  I,  158. 

^^  Maryland  Historical  Society  Fund  Publications,  no.  28,  p.  249. 

^'G.  L.  Beer,  The  Old  Colonial  System  (New  York,  1912),  part  I,  vol.  I, 
chap.  5. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  41 

acquiring  thereby  title  to  the  slaves  to  which  the  numbers  they 

drew  were  attached.'*^ 

In  the  chief  ports  of  the  British  continental  colonies  the  mari- 
time transporters  usually  engaged  merchants  on  shore  to  sell  the 
slaves  as  occasion  permitted,  whether  by  private  sale  or  at  auc- 
tion. At  Charleston  these  merchants  charged  a  ten  per  cent, 
commission  on  slave  sales,  though  their  factorage  rate  was  but 
five  per  cent,  on  other  sorts  of  merchandise ;  and  they  had  credits 
of  one  and  two  years  for  the  remittance  of  the  proceeds.*^  The 
following  advertisement,  published  at  Charleston  in  1785  jointly 
by  Ball,  Jennings  and  Company,  and  Smiths,  DeSaussure  and 
Darrell  is  typical  of  the  factors'  announcements :  "GOLD 
COAST  NEGROES.  On  Thursday,  the  17th.  of  March  instant, 
will  be  exposed  to  public  sale  near  the  Exchange  (if  not  before 
disposed  of  by  private  contract)  the  remainder  of  the  cargo  of 
negroes  imported  in  the  ship  Success,  Captain  John  Conner,  con- 
sisting chiefly  of  likely  young  boys  and  girls  in  good  health,  and 
having  been  here  through  the  winter  may  be  considered  in  some 
degree  seasoned  to  this  climate.  The  conditions  of  the  sale  will 
be  credit  to  the  first  of  January,  1786,  on  giving  bond  with  ap- 
proved security  where  required — the  negroes  not  to  be  delivered 
till  the  terms  are  complied  with."  *^  But  in  such  colonies  as  Vir- 
ginia where  there  was  no  concentration  of  trade  in  ports,  the 
ships  generally  sailed  from  place  to  place  peddling  their  slaves, 
with  notice  published  in  advance  when  practicable.  The  diseased 
or  otherwise  unfit  negroes  were  sold  for  whatever  price  they 
would  bring.  In  some  of  the  ports  it  appears  that  certain  physi- 
cians made  a  practise  of  buying  these  to  sell  the  survivors  at  a 
profit  upon  their  restoration  to  health.^" 

That  by  no  means  all  the  negroes  took  their  enslavement  griev- 
ously is  suggested  by  a  traveler's  note  at  Columbia,  South  Caro- 
lina, in  1806:  "We  met  ...  a  number  of  new  negroes,  some  of 
whom  had  been  in  the  country  long  enough  to  talk  intelligibly. 

"Lucien  Peytraud,  L'Esclavage  aux  Antilles,  Francoises  avant  i/8<f 
(Paris,  1897),  pp.  122,  123. 

**  D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  p.  75. 

*  The  Gazette  of  the  State  of  South  Carolina,  Mch.  10,    1783. 

■"C.   C.   Pobin,   Voyages   (Paris,   1806),  II,   170. 


42  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Their  likely  looks  induced  us  to  enter  into  a  talk  with  them. 
One  of  them,  a  very  bright,  handsome  youth  of  about  sixteen, 
could  talk  well.  He  told  us  the  circumstances  of  his  being  caught 
and  enslaved,  with  as  much  composure  as  he  would  any  common 
occurrence,  not  seeming  to  think  of  the  injustice  of  the  thing  nor 
to  speak  of  it  with  indignation.  .  .  .  He  spoke  of  his  master  and 
his  work  as  though  all  were  right,  and  seemed  not  to  know  he 
had  a  right  to  be  anything  but  a  slave."  ^^ 

In  the  principal  importing  colonies  careful  study  was  given  to 
the  comparative  qualities  of  the  several  African  stocks.  The 
consensus  of  opinion  in  the  premises  may  be  gathered  from  sev- 
eral contemporary  publications,  the  chief  ones  of  which  were 
written  in  Jamaica.'"'^  The  Senegalese,  who  had  a  strong  Arabic 
strain  in  their  ancestry,  were  considered  the  most  intelligent  of 
Africans  and  were  especially  esteemed  for  domestic  service,  the 
handicrafts  and  responsible  positions.  "They  are  good  com- 
manders over  other  negroes,  having  a  high  spirit  and  a  tolerable 
share  of  fidelity ;  but  they  are  unfit  for  hard  work ;  their  bodies 
are  not  robust  nor  their  constitutions  vigorous."  The  Mandingoes 
were  reputed  to  be  especially  gentle  in  demeanor  but  peculiarly 
prone  to  theft.  They  easily  sank  under  fatigue,  but  might  be 
employed  with  advantage  in  the  distillery  and  the  boiling  house 
or  as  watchmen  against  fire  and  the  depredations  of  cattle.  The 
Coromantees  of  the  Gold  Coast  stand  salient  in  all  accounts 
as  hardy  and  stalwart  of  mind  and  body.  Long  calls  them 
haughty,  ferocious  and  stubborn ;  Edwards  relates  examples  of 
their  Spartan  fortitude;  and  it  was  generally  agreed  that  they 
were  frequently  instigators  of  slave  conspiracies  and  insurrec- 
tions. Yet  their  spirit  of  loyalty  made  them  the  most  highly 
prized  of  servants  by  those  who  could  call  it  forth.     Of  them 

"  "Diary  of  Edward  Hooker,"  in  the  American  Historical  Association 
Report  for  1906,  p.  882. 

"  Edward  Long,  History  of  Jamaica  (London,  1774),  H.  403.  404;  Bryan 
Edwards,  History  of  the  British  Colonies  in  the  West  Indies,  various  edi- 
tions, book  IV,  chap.  3 ;  and  "A  Professional  Planter,"  Practical  Rules  for 
the  Management  and  Medical  Treatment  of  Negro  Slaves  in  the  Sugar 
Colonies  (London,  1803),  pp.  39-48.  The  pertinent  portion  of  this  last  is 
reprinted  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  H,  127-133.  For  the  si.nilar  views 
of  the  French  planters  in  the  West  Indies  see  Peytraud,  L'Esclavage  aiix 
Antilles  Frangaises,  pp.  87-9a 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE  43 

Christopher  Codrington,  governor  of  the  Leeward  Islands,  wrote 
in  1701  to  the  English  Board  of  Trade:  "The  Corramantes  are 
not  only  the  best  and  most  faithful  of  our  slaves,  but  are  really- 
all  born  heroes.  There  is  a  differance  between  them  and  all 
other  negroes  beyond  what  'tis  possible  for  your  Lordships  to 
conceive.  There  never  was  a  raskal  or  coward  of  that  nation. 
Intrepid  to  the  last  degree,  not  a  man  of  them  but  will  stand  to 
be  cut  to  pieces  without  a  sigh  or  groan,  grateful  and  obedient  to 
a  kind  master,  but  implacably  revengeful  when  ill-treated.  My 
father,  who  had  studied  the  genius  and  temper  of  all  kinds  of 
negroes  forty-five  years  with  a  very  nice  observation,  would  say, 
noe  man  deserved  a  Corramante  that  would  not  treat  him  like  a 
friend  rather  than  a  slave."  ^^ 

The  Whydahs,  Nagoes  and  Pawpaws  of  the  Slave  Coast  were 
generally  the  most  highly  esteemed  of  all.  They  were  lusty  and 
industrious,  cheerful  and  submissive.  "That  punishment  which 
excites  the  Koromantyn  to  rebel,  and  drives  the  Ebo  negro  to 
suicide,  is  received  by  the  Pawpaws  as  the  chastisement  of  legal 
authority  to  which  it  is  their  duty  to  submit  patiently."  As  to 
the  Eboes  or  Mocoes,  described  as  having  a  sickly  yellow  tinge 
in  their  complection,  jaundiced  eyes,  and  prognathous  faces  like 
baboons,  the  women  were  said  to  be  diligent  but  the  men  lazy,  de- 
spondent and  prone  to  suicide.  "They  require  therefore  the 
gentlest  and  mildest  treatment  to  reconcile  them  to  their  situa- 
tion; but  if  their  confidence  be  once  obtained  they  manifest  as 
great  fidelity,  affection  and  gratitude  as  can  reasonably  be  ex- 
pected from  men  in  a  state  of  slavery." 

The  "kingdom  of  Gaboon,"  which  straddled  the  equator,  was 
the  worst  reputed  of  all.  "From  thence  a  good  negro  was 
scarcely  ever  brought.  They  are  purchased  so  cheaply  on  the 
coast  as  to  tempt  many  captains  to  freight  with  them;  but  they 
generally  die  either  on  the  passage  or  soon  after  their  arrival  in 
the  islands.  The  debility  of  their  constitutions  is  astonishing." 
From  this  it  would  appear  that  most  of  the  so-called  Gaboons 
must  have  been  in  reality  Pygmies  caught  in  the  inland  equa- 

^^  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  Colonial  Series,  America  and  West  Indies, 
1701,  pp.  720,  721. 


44  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

torial  forests,  for  Bosman,  who  traded  among  the  Gaboons, 
merely  inveighed  against  their  garrulity,  their  indecision,  their 
gullibility  and  their  fondness  for  strong  drink,  while  as  to  their 
physique  he  observed :  "they  are  mostly  large,  robust  well  shaped 
men."  ^*  Of  the  Congoes  and  Angolas  the  Jamaican  writers  had 
little  to  say  except  that  in  their  glossy  black  they  were  slender 
and  sightly,  mild  in  disposition,  unusually  honest,  but  exception- 
ally stupid,  \. 

In  the  South  Carolina  market  Gambia  negroes,  mainly  Mandin- 
goes,  were  the  favorites,  and  Angolas  also  found  ready  sale ;  but 
cargoes  from  Calabar,  which  were  doubtless  comprised  mostly 
of  Eboes,  were  shunned  because  of  their  suicidal  proclivity. 
Henry  Laurens,  who  was  then  a  commission  dealer  at  Charles- 
ton, wrote  in  1755  that  the  sale  of  a  shipload  from  Calabar  then 
in  port  would  be  successful  only  if  no  other  Guinea  ships  arrived 
before  its  quarantine  was  ended,  for  the  people  would  not  buy 
negroes  of  that  stock  if  any  others  were  to  be  had.^^ 

It  would  appear  that  the  Congoes,  Angolas  and  Eboes  were 
especially  prone  to  run  away,  or  perhaps  particularly  easy  to  cap- 
ture when  fugitive,  for  among  the  1046  native  Africans  adver- 
tised as  runaways  held  in  the  Jamaica  workhouses  in  1803  there 
were  284  Eboes  and  Mocoes,  185  Congoes  and  259  Angolas  as 
compared  with  loi  Mandingoes,  60  Chambas  (from  Sierra  Le- 
one), 70  Coromantees,  57  Nagoes  and  Pawpaws,  and  30  scat- 
tering, along  with  a  total  of  488  American-born  negroes  and 
mulattoes,  and  187  unclassified.^® 

This  huge  maritime  slave  traffic  had  great  consequences  for  all 
the  countries  concerned.  In  Liverpool  it  made  millionaires,^'  and 
elsewhere  in  England,  Europe  and  New  England  it  brought 
prosperity  not  only  to  ship  owners  but  to  the  distillers  of  rum 
and  manufacturers  of  other  trade  goods.  In  the  American  plan- 
tation districts  it  immensely  stimulated  the  production  of  the 

"Bosman  in  Pinkerton's  Voyages,  XVI,  509,  510. 

"  D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  pp.  76,  77. 

"  These  data  were  generously  assembled  for  me  by  Professor  Chauncey 
S.  Boucher  of  Washington  University,  St.  Louis,  from  a  file  of  the  Royal 
Gazette  of  Kingston,  Jamaica,  for  the  year  1803,  which  is  preserved  in  the 
Charleston,  S.  C,  Library. 

"  Gomer  Williams,  chap.  6. 


THE  MARITIME  SLAVE  TRADE        45. 

staple  crops.  On  the  other  hand  it  kept  the  planters  constantly 
in  debt  for  their  dearly  bought  labor,  and  it  left  a  permanent  and 
increasingly  complex  problem  of  racial  adjustments.  In  Africa 
it  largely  transformed  the  primitive  scheme  of  life,  and  for  the 
worse.  It  created  new  and  often  unwholesome  wants ;  it  de- 
stroyed old  industries  and  it  corrupted  tribal  institutions.  The 
rum,  the  guns,  the  utensils  and  the  gewgaws  were  irresistible 
temptations.  Every  chief  and  every  tribesman  acquired  a  po- 
tential interest  in  slave  getting  and  slave  selling.  Charges  of 
witchcraft,  adultery,  theft  and  other  crimes  were  trumped  up 
that  the  number  of  convicts  for  sale  might  be  swelled;  debtors 
were  pressed  that  they  might  be  adjudged  insolvent  and  their 
persons  delivered  to  the  creditors ;  the  sufferings  of  famine  were 
left  unrelieved  that  parents  might  be  forced  to  sell  their  children 
or  themselves ;  kidnapping  increased  until  no  man  or  woman  and 
especially  no  child  was  safe  outside  a  village;  and  wars  and  raids 
were  multiplied  until  towns  by  hundreds  were  swept  from  the 
earth  and  great  zones  lay  void  of  their  former  teeming  popula- 
tion.^^ 

The  slave  trade  has  well  been  called  the  systematic  plunder  of 
a  continent.  But  in  the  irony  of  fate  those  Africans  who  lent 
their  hands  to  the  looting  got  nothing  but  deceptive  rewards, 
while  the  victims  of  the  rapine  were  quite  possibly  better  off  on 
the  American  plantations  than  the  captors  who  remained  in  the 
African  jungle.  The  only  participants  who  got  unquestionable 
profit  were  the  English,  European  and  Yankee  traders  and  man- 
ufacturers. 

**  C.  B.  Wadstrom,  Observations  on  the  Slave  Trade  (London,  1789); 
Lord  Muncaster,  Historical  Sketches  of  the  Slave  Trade  and  of  its  Effects 
in  Africa  (London,  1792)  ;  Jerome  Dowd,  The  Negro  Races,  vol.  3,  chap. 
2  (MS). 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS 

AS  regards  negro  slavery  the  history  of  the  West  Indies  is 
inseparable  from  that  of  North  America.  In  them  the 
plantation  system  originated  and  reached  its  greatest 
scale,  and  from  them  the  institution  of  slavery  was  extended  to 
the  continent.  The  industrial  system  on  the  islands,  and  par- 
ticularly on  those  occupied  by  the  British,  is  accordingly  instruc- 
tive as  an  introduction  and  a  parallel  to  the  continental  regime. 

The  early  career  of  the  island  of  Barbados  gives  a  striking 
instance  of  a  farming  colony  captured  by  the  plantation  system. 
Founded  in  1624  by  a  group  of  unprosperous  English  emigrants, 
it  pursued  an  even  and  commonplace  tenor  until  the  Civil  War 
in  England  sent  a  crowd  of  royaHst  refugees  thither,  together 
with  some  thousands  of  Scottish  and  Irish  prisoners  converted 
into  indentured  servants.  Negro  slaves  were  also  imported  tc 
work  alongside  the  redemptioners  in  the  tobacco,  cotton,  ginger, 
and  indigo  crops,  and  soon  proved  their  superiority  in  that  cli- 
mate, especially  when  yellow  fever,  to  which  the  Africans  are 
largely  immune,  decimated  the  white  population.  In  1643,  ^s 
compared  with  some  five  thousand  negroes  of  all  sorts,  there  were 
about  eighteen  thousand  white  men  capable  of  bearing  arms;  and 
in  the  little  island's  area  of  166  square  miles  there  were  nearly 
ten  thousand  separate  landholdings.  Then  came  the  introduc- 
tion of  sugar  culture,  which  brought  the  beginning  of  the  end 
of  the  island's  transformation.  A  fairly  typical  plantation  in  the 
transition  period  was  described  by  a  contemporary.  Of  its  five 
hundred  acres  about  two  hundred  were  planted  in  sugar-cane, 
twenty  in  tobacco,  five  in  cotton,  five  in  ginger  and  seventy  in 
provision  crops;  several  acres  were  devoted  to  pineapples, 
bananas,  oranges  and  the  like;  eighty  acres  were  in  pasturage, 
and  one  hundred  and  twenty  in  woodland.    There  were  a  sugar 

46 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  47 

mill,  a  boiling  house,  a  curing  house,  a  distillery,  tne  master's 
residence,  laborers'  cabins,  and  barns  and  stables.  The  live-stock 
numbered  forty-five  oxen,  eight  cows,  twelve  horses  and  sixteen 
asses;  and  the  labor  force  comprised  ninety-eight  "Christians," 
ninety-six  negroes  and  three  Indian  women  with  their  children. 
In  general,  this  writer  said,  "The  slaves  and  their  posterity, 
being  subject  to  their  masters  forever,  are  kept  and  preserved 
with  greater  care  than  the  (Christian)  servants,  who  are  theirs 
for'But  five  years  according  to  the  laws  of  the  island.^  So  that 
for  the  time  being  the  servants  have  the  worser  lives,  for  they 
are  put  to  very  hard  Ia^6'i%  ill  lodging  and  their  dyet  very  light." 
As  early  as  1645  George  Downing,  then  a  young  Puritan 
preacher  recently  graduated  from  Harvard  College  but  later  a 
distinguished  English  diplomat,  wrote  to  his  cousin  John  Win- 
throp,  Jr.,  after  a  voyage  in  the  West  Indies:  "If  you  go  to 
Barbados,  you  shal  see  a  flourishing  Hand,  many  able  men.  I 
beleive  they  have  bought  this  year  no  lesse  than  a  thousand  Ne- 
groes, and  the  more  they  buie  the  better  they  are  able  to  buye, 
for  in  a  yeare  and  halfe  they  will  earne  (with  God's  blessing) 
as  much  as  they  cost."  ^  Ten  years  later,  with  bonanza  prices 
prevailing  in  the  sugar  market,  the  Barbadian  planters  declared 
their  colony  to  be  "the  most  envyed  of  the  world"  and  estimated 
the  value  of  its  annual  crops  at  a  million  pounds  sterling.^  But 
in  the  early  sixties  a  severe  fall  in  sugar  prices  put  an  end  to  the 
boom  period  and  brought  the  realization  that  while  sugar  was  the 
rich  man's  opportunity  it  was  the  poor  man's  ruin.  By  1666 
emigration  to  other  colonies  had  halved  the  white  population ;  but 
the  slave  trade  had  increased  the  negroes  to  forty  thousand,  most 
of  whom  were  employed  on  the  eight  hundred  sugar  estates.*  For 
the  rest  of  the  century  Barbados  held  her  place  as  the  lead- 
ing producer  of  British  sugar  and  the  most  esteemed  of  the  Brit- 
ish colonies ;  but  as  the  decades  passed  the  fertility  of  her  limited 

*  Richard  Ligon,  History  of  Barbados  (London,  1657). 

'  Massachusetts   Historical  Society  Collections,  series  4,  vol.  6,  p.  536. 

'G.  L.  Beer,  Origins  of  the  British  Colonial  System  (New  York,  1908), 

p.  413. 

*G.  L.  Beer,  The  Old  Colonial  System,  part  I,  vol.  2,  pp.  9,  10, 


48  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

fields  .jecame  depleted,  and  her  importance  gradually  fell  sec- 
ondary to  that  of  the  growing  Jamaica. 

The  Barbadian  estates  were  generally  much  smaller  than  those 
of  Jamaica  came  to  be.  The  planters  nevertheless  not  only  con- 
trolled their  community  wholly  in  their  interest  but  long  main- 
tained a  unique  "planters'  committee"  at  London  to  make  repre- 
sentations to  the  English  government  on  behalf  of  their  class. 
They  pleaded  for  the  colony's  freedom  of  trade,  for  example, 
with  no  more  vigor  than  they  insisted  that  England  should  not 
interfere  with  the  Barbadian  law  to  prohibit  Quakers  from  ad- 
mitting negroes  to  their  meetings.  An  item  significant  of  their 
attitude  upon  race  relations  is  the  following  from  the  journal 
of  the  Crown's  committee  of  trade  and  plantations,  Oct.  8,  1680: 
I;  The  gentlemen  of  Barbados  attend,  .  .  .  who  declare  that  the 
*  conversion  of  their  slaves  to  Christianity  would  not  only  destroy 
their  property  but  endanger  the  island,  inasmuch  as  converted 
negroes  grow  more  perverse  and  intractable  than  others,  and 
hence  of  less  value  for  labour  or  sale.  The  disproportion  of 
blacks  to  white  being  great,  the  whites  have  no  greater  security 
than  the  diversity  of  the  negroes'  languages,  which  would  be  de- 
stroyed by  conversion  in  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  teach  them 
all  English.  The  negroes  are  a  sort  of  people  so  averse  to  learn- 
ing that  they  will  rather  hang  themselves  or  run  away  than  sub- 
mit to  it."  The  Lords  of  Trade  were  enough  impressed  by  this 
argument  to  resolve  that  the  -question  be  left  to  the  Barbadian 
\  government.^  X 
"  As  illustrating  the  plantation  regime  in  the  island  in  the  period 
of  its  full  industrial  development,  elaborate  instructions  are  ex- 
tant which  were  issued  about  1690  to  Richard  Harwood,  man- 
ager or  overseer  of  the  Drax  Hall  and  Hope  plantations  belong- 
ing to  the  Codrington  family.  These  included  directions  for 
planting,  fertilizing  and  cultivating  the  cane,  for  the  operation  of 
the  wind-driven  sugar  mill,  the  boiling  and  curing  houses  and  the 
distillery,  and  for  the  care  of  the  live  stock ;  but  the  main  con- 
cern was  with  the  slaves.     The  number  in  the  gangs  was  not 

^  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  Colonial  Series,  America  and  West  Indies, 
1677-1680,  p.  611. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  49 

stated,  but  the  expectation  was  expressed  that  in  oidinary  years 
from  ten  to  twenty  new  negroes  would  have  to  be  bought  to  keep 
the  ranks  full,  and  it  was  advised  that  Coromantees  be  preferred, 
since  they  had  been  found  best  for  the  work  on  these  estates. 
Plenty  was  urged  in  provision  crops  with  emphasis  upon  plan- 
tains and  cassava, — the  latter  because  of  the  certainty  of  its  har- 
vest, the  former  because  of  the  abundance  of  their  yield  in  years 
of  no  hurricanes  and  because  the  negroes  especially  delighted  in 
them  and  found  them  particularly  wholesome  as  a  dysentery  diet. 
The  services  of  a  physician  had  been  arranged  for,  but  the  man- 
ager was  directed  to  take  great  care  of  the  negroes'  health  and 
pay  special  attention  to  the  sick.  The  clothing  was  not  definitely 
stated  as  to  periods.  For  food  each  was  to  receive  weekly  a 
pound  of  fish  and  two  quarts  of  molasses,  tobacco  occasionally, 
salt  as  needed,  palm  oil  once  a  year,  and  home-grown  provisions 
in  abundance.  Offenses  committed  by  the  slaves  were  to  be  pun- 
ished immediately,  "many  of  them  beinr  of  the  houmer  of  avoid- 
ing punishment  when  threatened :  to  hang  themselves."  For 
drunkenness  the  stocks  were  recommended.  As  to  thefts  recog- 
nized as  especially  hard  to  repress,  the  manager  was  directed  to 
let  hunger  give  no  occasion  for  it.' 

Jamaica,  which  lies  a  thousand  miles  west  of  Barbados  and  has 
twenty-five  times  her  area,  was  captured  by  the  English  in  1655 
when  its  few  hundreds  of  Spaniards  had  developed  nothing  but 
cacao  and  cattle  raising.  English  settlement  began  after  the  Res- 
toration, with  Roundhead  exiles  supplemented  by  immigrants 
from  the  Lesser  Antilles  and  by  buccaneers  turned  farmers. 
Lands  were  granted  on  a  lavish  scale  on  the  south  side  of  the 
island  where  an  abundance  of  savannahs  facilitated  tillage;  but 
the  development  of  sugar  culture  proved  slow  by  reason  of  the 
paucity  of  slaves  and  the  unfamiliarity  of  the  settlers  with  the 
peculiarities  of  the  soil  and  climate.  With  the  increase  of  pros- 
perity, and  by  the  aid  of  managers  brought  from  Barbados,  sugar 
plantations  gradually  came  to  prevail  all  round  the  coast  and  in 
favorable  mountain  valleys,  while  smaller  estabhshments  here 

•  Original  MS.  in  the  Bodleian  Library,  A.  248,  3.  Copy  used  through  the 
courtesy  of  Dr.  F.  W.  Pitman  of  Yale  University. 


50  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  there  throve  more  moderately  in  the  production  of  cotton, 
pimento,  ginger,  provisions  and  live  stock.  For  many  years  the 
legislature,  prodded  by  occasional  slave  revolts,  tried  to  stimulate 
the  increase  of  whites  by  requiring  the  planters  to  keep  a  fixed 
proportion  of  indentured  servants;  but  in  the  early  eighteenth 
century  this  policy  proved  futile,  and  thereafter  the  whites  num- 
bered barely  one-tenth  as  many  as  the  negroes.  The  slaves  were 
reported  at  86,546  in  1734;  112,428  in  1744;  166,914  in  1768-;  and 
210,894  in  1787.  In  addition  there  were  at  the  last  date  some 
10,000  negroes  legally  iree,  ana  14UU  maroons  or  escaped  slaves 
dwelling  permanently  in  the  mountain  fastnesses.  The  number 
of  sugar  plantations  was  651  in  1768,  and  'j^'j  in  1791 ;  and  they 
contained  about  three-fifths  of  all  the  slaves  on  the  island. 
Throughout  this  latter  part  of  the  century  the  average  holding 
on  the  sugar  estates  was  about  180  slaves  of  all  ages.'^ 

When  the  final  enumeration  of  slaves  in  the  British  possessions 
was  made  in  the  eighteen-thirties  there  were  no  single  Jamaica 
holdings  reported  as  large  as  that  of  1598  slaves  held  by  James 
Blair  in  Guiana ;  but  occasional  items  were  of  a  scale  ranging  from 
five  to  eight  hundred  each,  and  hundreds  numbered  above  one 
hundred  each.  In  many  of  these  instances  the  same  persons  are 
listed  as  possessing  several  holdings,  with  Sir  Edward  Hyde 
East  particularly  notable  for  the  large  number  of  his  great 
squads.  The  degree  of  absenteeism  is  indicated  by  the  frequency 
of  English  nobles,  knights  and  gentlemen  among  the  large  pro- 
prietors. Thus  the  Earl  of  Balcarres  had  474  slaves ;  the  Earl 
of  Harwood  232 ;  the  Earl  and  Countess  of  Airlie  59 ;  Earl  Talbot 
and  Lord  Shelborne  jointly  79;  Lord  Seaford  70;  Lord  Hather- 
ton  jointly  with  Francis  Downing,  John  Benbow  and  the  Right 
Reverend  H.  Philpots,  Lord  Bishop  of  Exeter,  two  holdings  of 
304  and  236  slaves  each;  and  the  three  Gladstones,  Thomas, 
William  and  Robert  468  slaves  jointly.^ 

Such  an  average  scale  and  such  a  prevalence  of  absenteeism 
never  prevailed  in  any  other  Anglo-American  plantation  com- 

''Edward  Long,  History  of  Jamaica,  I,  494,  Bryan  Edwards,  History  of 
the  British  Colonies  in  the  West  Indies,  book  II,  appendix. 

'  "Accounts  of  Slave  Compensation  Claims,"  in  the  British  official  Ac- 
counts and  Papers,  1837-1838,  vol.  XLVIII. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  51 

munity,  largely  because  none  of  the  other  staples  required  so 
much  manufacturing  as  sugar  did  in  preparing  the  crops  for  mar- 
ket. As  Bryan  Edwards  wrote  in  1793  :  "the  business  of  sugar 
planting  is  a  sort  of  adventure  in  which  the  man  that  engages 
must  engage  deeply,  ...  It  requires  a  capital  of  no  less  than 
thirty  thousand  pounds  sterling  to  embark  in  this  employment 
with  a  fair  prospect  of  success."  Such  an  investment,  he  par- 
ticularized, would  procure  and  establish  as  a  going  concern  a 
plantation  of  300  acres  in  cane  and  100  acres  each  in  provision 
crops,  forage  and  woodland,  together  with  the  appropriate  build- 
ings and  apparatus,  and  a  working  force  of  80  steers,  60  mules 
and  250  slaves,  at  the  current  price  for  these  last  of  £50  sterling 
a  head.^  So  distinctly  were  the  plantations  regarded  as  capital- 
istic ventures  that  they  came  to  be  among  the  chief  speculations 
of  their  time  for  absentee  investors. 

When  Lord  Chesterfield  tried  in  1767  to  buy  his  son  a  seat  in 
Parliament  he  learned  "that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  bor- 
ough to  be  had  now,  for  that  the  rich  East  and  West  Indians  had 
secured  them  all  at  the  rate  of  three  thousand  pounds  at  the 
least."  ^°  And  an  Englishman  after  traveling  in  the  French  and 
British  Antilles  in  1825  wrote :  "The  French  colonists,  whether 
Creoles  or  Europeans,  consider  the  West  Indies  as  their  country ; 
they  cast  no  wistful  looks  toward  France.  ...  In  our  colonies  it 
is  quite  different;  .  ,  ,  every  one  regards  the  colony  as  a  tem- 
porary lodging  place  where  they  must  sojourn  in  sugar  and  mo- 
lasses till  their  mortgages  will  let  them  live  elsewhere.  They  call 
England  their  home  though  many  of  them  have  never  been 
there.  ,  .  .  The  French  colonist  deliberately  expatriates  himself ; 
the  Englishman  never."  ^^  Absenteeism  was  throughout  a  serious 
detriment.  Many  and  perhaps  most  of  the  Jamaica  proprietors 
were  living  luxuriously  in  England  instead  of  industriously  on 
their  estates.  One  of  them,  the  talented  author  "Monk" 
Lewis,  when  he  visited  his  own  plantation  in  1815-1817,  near  the 
end  of  his  life,  found  as  much  novelty  in  the  doings  of  his  slaves 

*  Bryan  Edwards,  History  of  the  West  Indies,  book  5,  chap.  3. 
"Lord  Chesterfield,  Letters  to  his  Son  (London,  1774),  II,  525. 
"  H.  N.  Coleridge,  Six  Months  in  the  West  Indies,  4th  ed.   (London, 
1832),  pp.  131,  132. 


52  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

as  if  he  had  been  drawing  his  income  from  shares  in  the  BanK 
of  England ;  but  even  he,  while  noting  their  clamorous  good  na- 
ture was  chiefly  impressed  by  their  indolence  and  perversity.^^  It 
was  left  for  an  invalid  traveling  for  his  health  to  remark  most 
vividly  the  human  equation :  "The  negroes  cannot  be  silent ;  they 
talk  in  spite  of  themselves.  Every  passion  acts  upon  them  with 
strange  intensity,  their  anger  is  sudden  and  furious,  their  mirth 
clamorous  and  excessive,  their  curiosity  audacious,  and  their  love 
the  sheer  demand  for  gratification  of  an  ardent  animal  desire. 
Yet  by  their  nature  they  are  good-humored  in  the  highest  degree, 
and  I  know  nothing  more  delightful  than  to  be  met  by  a  group 
of  negro  girls  and  to  be  saluted  with  their  kind  'How  d'ye  massa? 
how  d'ye  massa  ?'  "  ^^ 

On  the  generality  of  the  plantations  the  tone  of  the  management 
was  too  much  like  that  in  most  modem  factories.  The  laborers 
were  considered  more  as  work-units  than  as  men,  women  and 
children.  Kindliness  and  comfort,  cruelty  and  hardship,  were 
rated  at  balance-sheet  value ;  births  and  deaths  were  reckoned  in 
profit  and  loss,  and  the  expense  of  rearing  children  was  balanced 
against  the  cost  of  new  Africans,  These  things  were  true  in 
some  degree  in  the  North  American  slave-holding  communities, 
but  in  the  West  Indies  they  excelled. 

In  buying  new  negroes  a  practical  planter  having  a  preference 
for  those  of  some  particular  tribal  stock  might  make  sure  of  get- 
ting them  only  by  taking  with  him  to  the  slave  ships  or  the 
"Guinea  yards"  in  the  island  ports  a  slave  of  the  stock  wanted  and 
having  him  interrogate  those  for  sale  in  his  native  language  to 
learn  whether  they  were  in  fact  what  the  dealers  declared  them 
to  be.  Shrewdness  was  even  more  necessary  to  circumvent  other 
tricks  of  the  trade,  especially  that  of  fattening  up,  shaving  and 
oiling  the  skins  of  adult  slaves  to  pass  them  off  as  youthful.  The 
ages  most  desired  in  purchasing  were  between  fifteen  and  twen- 
ty-five years.  If  these  were  not  to  be  had  well  grown  children 
were  preferable  to  the  middle-aged,  since  they  were  much  less 

"  Matthew  G.  Lewis,  Journal  of  a  West  Indian  Proprietor,  kept  dur- 
ing a  Residence  in  the  Island  of  Jamaica  (London,  1834). 
"  H.  N.  Coleridge,  p.  76. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  53 

apt  to  die  in  the  "seasoning,"  they  would  learn  English  readily, 
and  their  service  would  increase  instead  of  decreasing  after  the 
lapse  of  the  first  few  years. 

The_conversion  of  new  negroes  into  plantat_ion_laborers,  a  proc- 
ess  called  "breaking  in,"  required  always  a  minghng  of  delicacy 
and  firmness.     Some  planters   distributed   their  new  purchases 
among  the  seasoned  households,  thus  delegating  the  task  largely 
to  the  veteran  slaves.     Others  housed  and  tended  them  separately 
under  the  charge  of  a  select  staflf  of  nurses  and  guardians  and 
with  frequent  inspection  from  headquarters.     The  mortality  rate 
was  generally  high  under  either  plan,  ranging  usually  from  twenty 
to  thirty  per  cent,  in  the  seasoning  period  of  three  or  four  years. ^ 
The  deaths  came  from  diseases  brought  from  Africa,  such  as  the  / 
yaws  which  was  similar  to  syphilis ;  from  debilities  and  maladies  V 
acquired  on  the  voyage ;  from  the  change  of  climate  and  food ;  ( 
from  exposure  incurred  in  running  away;  from  morbid  habits   \ 
such  as  dirt-eating;  and  from  accident,  manslaughter  and  sui-  * 
cide.^* 

The  seasoned  slaves  were  housed  by  families  in  separate  huts 
grouped  into  "quarters,"  and  were  generally  assigned  small  tracts 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  plantation  on  which  to  raise  their  own  pro- 
vision crops.  Allowances  of  clothing,  dried  fish,  molasses,  rum, 
salt,  etc.,  were  issued  them  from  the  commissary,  together  with 
any  other  provisions  needed  to  supplement  their  own  produce. 
The  field  force  of  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls  was  generally 
divided  according  to  strength  into  three  gangs,  with  special  de- 
tails for  the  mill,  the  coppers  and  the  still  when  needed ;  and  per- 
manent corps  were  assigned  to  the  handicrafts,  to  domestic  serv- 
ice and  to  various  incidental  functions.  The  larger  the  planta- 
tion, of  course,  the  greater  the  opportunity  of  differentiating 
tasks  and  assigning  individual  slaves  to  employments  fitted  to 
their  special  aptitudes. 

The  planters  put  such  emphasis  upon  the  regularity  and  vigor 
of  the  routine  that  they  generally  neglected  other  equally  vital 

"Long,  Jamaica,  II,  435;  Edwards,  West  Indies,  book  4,  chap.  5;  A 
Professional  Planter.  Rules,  chap.  2 ;  Thomas  Roughley,  Jamaica  Planter's 
Guide  (London,  18.23),  pp.  1 18-120. 


54  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

things.  They  ignored  the  value  of  labor-saving  devices,  most  of 
them  even  shunning  so  obviously  desirable  an  implement  as  the 
plough  and  using  the  hoe  alone  in  breaking  the  land  and  cultivat- 
ing the  crops.  But  still  more  serious  was  the  passive  acquiescence 
in  the  depletion  of  their  slaves  by  excess  of  deaths  over  births. 
This  decrease  amounted  to  a  veritable  decimation,  requiring  the 
frequent  importation  of  recruits  to  keep  the  ranks  full.  Long 
estimated  this  loss  at  about  two  per  cent,  annually,  while  Edwards 
reckoned  that  in  his  day  there  were  surviving  in  Jamaica  little 
more  than  one-third  as  many  negroes  as  had  been  imported  in  the 
preceding  career  of  the  colony. ^^  The  staggering  mortality  rate 
among  the  new  negroes  goes  far  toward  accounting  for  this ;  but 
even  the  seasoned  groups  generally  failed  to  keep  up  their  num- 
bers. The  birth  rate  was  notoriously  small ;  but  the  chief  secret 
of  the  situation  appears  to  have  lain  in  the  poor  care  of  the  new- 
born children.  A  surgeon  of  long  experience  said  that  a  third  of 
the  babies  died  in  their  first  month,  and  that  few  of  the  imported 
women  bore  children ;  and  another  veteran  resident  said  that  com- 
monly more  than  a  quarter  of  the  babies  died  within  the  first  nine 
days,  of  "jaw-fall,"  and  nearly  another  fourth  before  they  passed 
their  second  year.^*  At  least  one  public-spirited  planter  advocated 
in  1801  the  heroic  measure  of  closing  the  slave  trade  in  order  to 
raise  the  price  of  labor  and  coerce  the  planters  into  saving  it  both 
by  improving  their  apparatus  and  by  diminishing  the  death 
rate.^^     But  his  fellows  would  have  none  of  his  policy. 

While  in  the  other  plantation  staples  the  crop  was  planted  and 
reaped  in  a  single  year,  sugar  cane  had  a  cycle  extending  through 
several  years.  A  typical  field  in  southside  Jamaica  would  be 
"holed"  or  laid  off  in  furrows  between  March  and  June,  planted 
in  the  height  of  the  rainy  season  between  July  and  September, 
cultivated  for  fifteen  months,  and  harvested  in  the  first  half  of 
the  second  year  after  its  planting.  Then  when  the  rains  returned 
new  shoots,  "rattoons,"  would  sprout  from  the  old  roots  to  yield 

"  Long,  III,  432 ;  Edwards,  book  4,  chap.  2. 

^Abridgement  of  the  evidence  taken  before  a  committee  of  the  whole 
House:  The  Slave  Trade,  no.  2  (London,  1790),  pp.  48,  80. 

"  Clement  Caines,  Letters  on  the  Cultivation  of  the  Otaheite  Cane 
XLondon,  1801),  pp.  274-283. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  55 

a  second  though  diminished  harvest  in  the  following  spring,  and 
so  on  for  several  years  more  until  the  rattoon  or  "stubble"  yield 
became  too  small  to  be  worth  while.  The  period  of  profitable  rat- 
tooning  ran  in  some  specially  favorable  districts  as  high  as  four- 
teen years,  but  in  general  a  field  was  replanted  after  the  fourth 
crop.  In  such  case  the  cycles  of  the  several  fields  were  so  ar- 
ranged on  any  well  managed  estate  that  one-fifth  of  the  area  in 
cane  was  replanted  each  year  and  four-fifths  harvested. 

This  coordination  of  cycles  brought  it  about  that  oftentimes  al- 
most every  sort  of  work  on  the  plantation  was  going  on  simul- 
taneously. Thus  on  the  Lodge  and  Grange  plantations  which 
were  apparently  operated  as  a  single  unit,  the  extant  journal  of 
work  during  the  harvest  month  of  May,  1801,^*  shows  a  distri- 
bution of  the  total  of  314  slaves  as  follows:  ninety  of  the  "big 
gang"  and  fourteen  of  the  "big  gang  feeble"  together  with  fifty 
of  the  "little  gang"  were  stumping  a  new  clearing,  "holing"  or 
laying  off  a  stubble  field  for  replanting,  weeding  and  filling  the 
gaps  in  the  field  of  young  first-year  or  "plant"  cane,  and  heaping 
the  manure  in  the  ox-lot ;  ten  slaves  were  cutting,  ten  tying  and 
ten  more  hauling  the  cane  from  the  fields  in  harvest ;  fifteen  were 
in  a  "top  heap"  squad  whose  work  was  conjecturally  the  saving 
of  the  green  cane  tops  for  forage  and  fertilizer ;  nine  were  tend- 
ing the  cane  mill,  seven  were  in  the  boiling  house,  producing  a 
hogshead  and  a  half  of  sugar  daily,  and  two  were  at  the  two  stills 
making  a  puncheon  of  rum  every  four  days;  six  watchmen  and 
fence  menders,  twelve  artisans,  eight  stockminders,  two  hunters, 
four  domestics,  and  two  sick  nurses  were  at  their  appointed 
tasks;  and  eighteen  invalids  and  pregnant  women,  four  disabled 
with  sores,  forty  infants  and  one  runaway  were  doing  no  work. 
There  were  listed  thirty  horses,  forty  mules  and  a  hundred  oxen 
and  other  cattle ;  but  no  item  indicates  that  a  single  plow  was  in 
use. 

The  cane-mill  in  the  eighteenth  century  consisted  merely  of 
three  iron-sheathed  cylinders,  two  of  them  set  against  the  third, 
turned  by  wind,  water  or  cattle.  The  canes,  tied  into  small  bun- 
dles for  greater  compression,  were  given  a  double  squeezing  while 

"  Printed  by  Clement  Caines  in  a  table  facing  p.  246  of  his  Letters. 


56  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

passing  through  the  mill.  The  juice  expressed  found  its  way 
through  a  trough  into  the  boiling  house  while  the  flattened  stalks, 
called  mill  trash  or  megass  in  the  British  colonies  and  bagasse  in 
Louisiana,  were  carried  to  sheds  and  left  to  dry  for  later  use  as 
fuel  under  the  coppers  and  stills. 

In  the  boiling  house  the  cane-juice  flowed  first  into  a  large  re- 
ceptacle, the  clarifier,  where  by  treatment  with  lime  and  moderate 
heat  it  was  separated  from  its  grosser  impurities.  It  then  passed 
into  the  first  or  great  copper,  where  evaporation  by  boiling  began 
and  some  further  impurities,  rising  in  scum,  were  taken  off. 
After  further  evaporation  in  smaller  coppers  the  thickened  fluid 
was  ladled  into  a  final  copper,  the  teache,  for  a  last  boiling  and 
concentration ;  and  when  the  product  of  the  teache  was  ready  for 
crystallization  it  was  carried  away  for  the  curing.  In  Louisiana 
the  successive  caldrons  were  called  the  grande,  the  propre,  the 
flambeau  and  the  batterie,  the  last  of  these  corresponding  to  the 
Jamaican  teache. 

The  curing  house  was  merely  a  timber  framework  with  a  roof 
above  and  a  great  shallow  sloping  vat  below.  The  sugary  syrup 
from  the  teache  was  generally  potted  directly  into  hogsheads  rest- 
ing on  the  timbers,  and  allowed  to  cool  with  occasional  stirrings. 
Most  of  the  sugar  stayed  in  the  hogsheads,  while  some  of  it 
trickled  with  the  mother  liquor,  molasses,  through  perforations 
in  the  bottoms  into  the  vat  beneath.  When  the  hogsheads  were 
full  of  the  crudely  cured,  moist,  and  impure  "muscovado"  sugar, 
they  were  headed  up  and  sent  to  port.  The  molasses,  the  scum, 
and  the  juice  of  the  canes  tainted  by  damage  from  rats  and  hurri- 
canes were  carried  to  vats  in  the  distillery  where,  with  yeast  and 
water  added,  the  mixture  fermented  and  when  distilled  yielded 
rum. 

The  harvest  was  a  time  of  special  activity,  of  good  feeling,  and 
even  of  a  certain  degree  of  pageantry.  Lafcadio  Hearn,  many 
years  after  the  slaves  were  freed,  described  the  scene  in  Marti- 
nique as  viewed  from  the  slopes  of  Mont  Pelee :  "We  look  back 
over  the  upreaching  yellow  fan-spread  of  cane-fields,  and  winding 
of  tortuous  valleys,  and  the  sea  expanding  beyond  an  opening  to  the 
west. ..  .  .  Far  down  we  can  distinguish  a  line  of  field-hands — 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  57 

the  whole  atelier,  as  it  is  called,  of  a  plantation — slowly  descend- 
ing a  slope,  hewing  the  canes  as  they  go.  There  is  a  woman  to 
every  two  men,  a  binder  (amarreuse) :  she  gathers  the  canes  as 
they  are  cut  down,  binds  them  with  their  own  tough  long  leaves 
into  a  sort  of  sheaf,  and  carries  them  away  on  her  head; — the 
men  wield  their  cutlasses  so  beautifully  that  it  is  a  delight  to 
watch  them.  One  cannot  often  enjoy  such  a  spectacle  nowa- 
days ;  tor  the  introduction  of  the  piece-work  system  has  destroyed 
the  picturesqueness  of  plantation  labor  throughout  the  islands, 
with  rare  exceptions.  Formerly  the  work  of  cane-cutting  resem- 
bled the  march  of  an  army ; — first  advanced  the  cutlassers  in  line, 
naked  to  the  waist;  then  the  amarreuses,  the  women  who  tied 
and  carried;  and  behind  these  the  ka,  the  drum, — with  a  paid 
crieur  or  crieuse  to  lead  the  song; — and  lastly  the  black  Com- 
mandeur,  for  general."  ^^ 

After  this  bit  of  rhapsody  the  steadying  effect  of  statistics  may 
be  abundantly  had  from  the  records  of  the  great  Worthy  Park 
plantation,  elaborated  expressly  for  posterity's  information.  This 
estate,  lying  in  St.  John's  parish  on  the  southern  slope  of  the  Ja- 
maica mountain  chain,  comprised  not  only  the  plantation  proper, 
which  had  some  560  acres  in  sugar  cane  and  smaller  fields  in  food 
and  forage  crops,  but  also  Spring  Garden,  a  nearby  cattle  ranch, 
and  Mickleton  which  was  presumably  a  relay  station  for  the  teams 
hauling  the  sugar  and  rum  to  Port  Henderson.  The  records, 
which  are  available  for  the  years  from  1792  to  1796  inclusive, 
treat  the  three  properties  as  one  establishment.^" 

The  slaves  of  the  estate  at  the  beginning  of  1792  numbered 
355,  apparently  all  seasoned  negroes,  of  whom  150  were  in  the 
main  field  gang.  But  this  force  was  inadequate  for  the  full 
routine,  and  in  that  year  "jobbing  gangs"  from  outside  were 
employed  at  rates  from  2s.  6d.  to  2>^.  per  head  per  day  and  at  a 
total  cost  of  £1832,  reckoned  probably  in  Jamaican  currency  which 
stood  at  thirty  per  cent,  discount.  In  order  to  relieve  the  need 
of  this  outside  labor  the  management  began  that  year  to  buy  new 

"Lafcadio  Hearn,  Two  Years  in  the  French  West  Indies  (New  York, 
1890),  p.  275. 

*°  These  records  have  been  analyzed  in  U.  B.  Phillips,  "A  Jamaica  Slave 
Plantation,"  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  XIX,  543-558. 


58  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Africans  on  a  scale  considered  reckless  by  all  the  island  authori- 
ties. In  March  five  men  and  five  women  were  bought;  and  in 
October  25  men,  27  women,  16  boys,  16  girls  and  6  children,  all 
new  Congoes;  and  in  the  next  year  51  males  and  30  females,  part 
Congoes  and  part  Coromantees  and  nearly  all  of  them  eighteen 
to  twenty  years  old.  Thirty  new  huts  were  built ;  special  cooks 
and  nurses  were  detailed ;  and  quantities  of  special  foodstuffs 
were  bought — yams,  plantains,  flour,  fresh  and  salt  fish,  and 
fresh  beef  heads,  tongues,  hearts  and  bellies;  but  it  is  not  sur- 
prising to  find  that  the  next  outlay  for  equipment  was  for  a 
large  new  hospital  in  1794,  costing  £341  for  building  its  brick 
walls  alone.  Yaws  became  serious,  but  that  was  a  trifle  as  com- 
pared with  dysentery;  and  pleurisy,  pneumonia,  fever  and 
dropsy  had  also  to  be  reckoned  with.  About  fifty  of  the  new 
negroes  were  quartered  for  several  years  in  a  sort  of  hospital 
camp  at  Spring  Garden,  where  the  routine  even  for  the  able- 
bodied  was  much  lighter  than  on  Worthy  Park. 

One  of  the  new  negroes  died  in  1792,  and  another  in  the  next 
year.  Then  in  the  spring  of  1794  the  heavy  mortality  began. 
In  that  year  at  least  31  of  the  newcomers  died,  nearly  all  of^ 
them  from  the  "bloody  flux"  (dysentery)  except  two  who  were 
thought  to  have  committed  suicide.  By  1795,  however,  the  epi- 
demic had  passed.  Of  the  five  deaths  of  the  new  negroes_that 
year,  two  were  attributed  to  dirt-eating,^^  one  to_Yaws,  and  two 
to  ulcers,  probably  caused  by  yaws.  The  three  years  of  the 
seasoning  period  were  now  ended,  with  about  three-fourths  of 
the  number  imported  still  alive.  The  loss  was  perhaps  less  than 
usual  where  such  large  batches  were  bought;  but  it  demon- 
strates the  strength  of  the  shock  involved  in  the  transplantation 
from  Africa,  even  after  the  severities  of  the  middle  passage  had 
been  survived  and  after  the  weaklings  among  the  survivors  had 
been  culled  out  at  the  ports.  The  outlay  for  jobbing  gangs  on 
Worthy  Park  rapidly  diminished. 

The  list  of  slaves  at  the  beginning  of  1794  is  the  only  one  giv- 
ing full  data  as  to  ages,  colors  and  health  as  well  as  occupations. 


J 


^ "  The  "fatal  habit  of  eating  dirt"  is  described  by  Thomas  Roughley  in 
his  Planter's  Guide  (London,  1823);  pp.  1 18-120. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  59 

The  ages  were  of  course  in  many  cases  mere  approximations. 
The  "great  house  negroes"  head  the  list,  fourteen  in  number. 
They  comprised  four  housekeepers,  one  of  whom  however  was 
but  eight  years  old,  three  waiting  boys,  a  cook,  two  washer- 
women, two  gardeners  and  a  grass  carrier,  and  included  nomi- 
nally Quadroon  Lizette  who  after  having  been  hired  out  for  sev- 
eral years  to  Peter  Douglass,  the  owner  of  a  jobbing  gang,  was 
this  year  manumitted. 

The  overseer's  house  haa  its  proportionate  staff  of  nine  do- 
mestics with  two  seamstresses  added,  and  it  was  also  headquar- 
ters both  for  the  nursing  corps  and  a  group  engaged  in  minor  in- 
dustrial pursuits.  The  former,  with  a  "black  doctor"  named 
Will  Morris  at  its  head,  included  a  midwife,  two  nurses  for  the 
hospital,  four  (one  of  them  blind)  for  the  new  negroes,  two  for 
the  children  in  the  day  nursery,  and  one  for  the  suckling  babies  of 
the  women  in  the  gangs.  The  latter  comprised  three  cooks  to 
the  gangs,  one  of  whom  had  lost  a  hand;  a  groom,  three  hog 
tenders,  of  whom  one  was  ruptured,  another  "distempered"  and 
the  third  a  ten-year-old  boy,  and  ten  aged  idlers  including 
Quashy  Prapra  and  Abba's  Moll  to  mend  pads,  Yellow's  Cuba 
and  Peg's  Nancy  to  tend  the  poultry  house,  and  the  rest  to  gather 
grass  and  hog  feed. 

Next  were  listed  the  watchmen,  thirty-one  m  number,  to  guard 
against  depredations  of  men,  cattle  and  rats  and  against  con- 
flagrations which  might  sweep  the  ripening  cane-fields  and  the 
buildings.  All  of  these  were  black  but  the  mulatto  foreman, 
and  only  six  were  described  as  able-bodied.  The  disabilities 
noted  were  a  bad  sore  leg,  a  broken  back,  lameness,  partial  blind- 
ness, distemper,  weakness,  and  cocobees  which  was  a  malady  of 
the  blood. 

A  considerable  number  of  the  slaves  already  mentioned  were 
in  such  condition  that  little  work  might  be  expected  of  them. 
Those  completely  laid  off  were  nine  superannuated  ranging 
from  seventy  to  eighty-five  years  old,  three  invalids,  and  three 
women  relieved  of  work  as  by  law  required  for  having  reared 
six  children  each. 

Among  the  tradesmen,  virtually  all  the  blacks  were  stated  to 


6o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

be  fit  for  field  work,  but  the  five  mulattoes  and  the  one  quadroon, 
though  mostly  youthful  and  healthy,  were  described  as  not  fit 
for  the  field.  There  were  eleven  carpenters,  eight  coopers,  four 
sawyers,  three  masons  and  twelve  cattlemen,  each  squad  with  a 
foreman ;  and  there  were  two  ratcatchers  whose  work  was  highly 
important,  for  the  rats  swarmed  in  incredible  numbers  and 
spoiled  the  cane  if  left  to  work  their  will.  A  Jamaican  author 
wrote,  for  example,  that  in  five  or  six  months  on  one  planta- 
tion "not  less  than  nine  and  thirty  thousand  were  caught."  ^^ 

In  the  "weeding  gang,"  in  which  most  of  the  children  from 
five  to  eight  years  old  were  kept  as  much  for  control  as  for 
•achievement,  there  were  twenty  pickaninnies,  all  black,  under 
Mirtilla  as  "driveress,"  who  had  borne  and  lost  seven  children 
of  her  own.  Thirty-nine  other  children  were  too  young  for  the 
weeding  gang,  at  least  six  of  whom  were  quadroons.  Two  of 
these  last,  the  children  of  Joanny,  a  washerwoman  at  the 
overseer's  house,  were  manumitted  in  1795. 

Fifty-five,  all  new  negroes  except  Darby  the  foreman,  and 
including  Blossom  the  infant  daughter  of  one  of  the  women, 
comprised  the  Spring  Garden  squad.  Nearly  all  of  these  were 
twenty  or  twenty-one  years  old.  The  men  included  Washing- 
ton, Franklin,  Hamilton,  Burke,  Fox,  Milton,  Spencer,  Hume 
and  Sheridan;  the  women  Spring,  Summer,  July,  Bashfull,  Vir- 
tue, Frolic,  Gamesome,  Lady,  Madame,  Dutchess,  Mirtle  and 
Cowslip.  Seventeen  of  this  distinguished  company  died  within 
the  year. 

The  "big  gang"  on  Worthy  Park  numbered  137,  comprising 
64  men  from  nineteen  to  sixty  years  old  and  "j^^  women  from 
nineteen  to  fifty  years,  though  but  four  of  the  women  and  nine 
of  the  men,  including  Quashy  the  "head  driver"  or  foreman, 
were  past  forty  years.  The  gang  included  a  "head  home 
wainman,"  a  "head  road  wainman,"  who  appears  to  have  been 
also  the  sole  slave  plowman  on  the  place,  a  head  muleman,  three 
distillers,  a  boiler,  two  sugar  potters,  and  two  "sugar  guards" 
for  the  wagons  carrying  the  crop  to  port.     All  of   the  gang 

"William  Beckford,  A  Descriptive  Account  of  Jamaica  (London,  1790), 
I,  55,  56. 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  6i 

were  described  as  healthy,  able-bodied  and  black.  A  consider- 
able number  in  it  were  new  negroes,  but  only  seven  of  the  whole 
died  in  this  year  of  heaviest  mortality. 

The  "second  gang,"  employed  in  a  somewhat  lighter  routine 
under  Sharper  as  foreman,  comprised  40  women  and  27  men 
ranging  from  fifteen  to  sixty  years,  all  black.  While  most  of 
them  were  healthy,  five  were  consumptive,  four  were  ulcerated, 
one  was  "inclined  to  be  bloated,"  one  was  "very  weak,"  and 
Pheba  was  "healthy  but  worthless." 

Finally  in  the  third  or  "small  gang,"  for  yet  lighter  work 
under  Baddy  as  driveress  with  Old  Robin  as  assistant,  there 
were  68  boys  and  girls,  all  black,  mostly  between  twelve  and 
fifteen  years  old.  The  draught  animals  comprised  about  80  mules 
and  140  oxen. 

Among  the  528  slaves  all  told — 284  males  and  244  females — 

74,  equally  divided  between  the  sexes,  were  fifty  years  old  and 
upwards.  If  the  new  negroes,  virtually  all  of  whom  were 
doubtless  in  early  life,  be  subtracted  from  the  gross,  it  appears 
that  one-fifth  of  the  seasoned  stock  had  reached  the  half  century, 
and  one-eighth  were  sixty  years  old  and  over.  This  is  a  good 
showing  of  longevity. 

About  eighty  of  the  seasoned  women  were  within  the  age 
limits  of  childbearing.  The  births  recorded  were  on  an  average 
of  nine  for  each  of  the  five  years  covered,  which  was  hardly 
half  as  many  as  might  have  been  expected  under  favorable  con- 
ditions. Special  entry  was  made  in  1795  of  the  number  of  chil- 
dren each  woman  had  borne  during  her  life,  the  number  of  these 
living  at  the  time  this  record  was  made,  and  the  number  of  mis- 
carriages each  woman  had  had.  The  total  of  births  thus  re- 
corded was  345;  of  children  then  living  159;  of  miscarriages 

75.  Old  Quasheba  and  Betty  Madge  had  each  borne  fifteen 
children,  and  sixteen  other  women  had  borne  from  six  to  eleven 
each.  On  the  other  hand,  seventeen  women  of  thirty  years  and 
upwards  had  had  no  children  and  no  miscarriages.  The  child- 
bearing  records  of  the  women  past  middle  age  ran  higher  than 
those  of  the  younger  ones  to  a  surprising  degree.  Perhaps  con- 
ditions on  Worthy  Park  had  been  more  favorable  at  an  earlier 


62  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

period,  when^he  owner  and  his  family  may  possibly  have  been 
resident  there.  The  fact  that  more  than  half  of  the  children 
whom  these  women  had  borne  were  dead  at  the  time  of  the 
record  comports  with  the  reputation  of  the  sugar  colonies  for 
heavy  infant  mortality.  With  births  so  infrequent  and  infant 
deaths  so  many  it  may  well  appear  that  the  notorious  failure  of 
the  island-bred  stock  to  maintain  its  numbers  was  not  due  to 
the  working  of  the  slaves  to  death.  The  poor  care  of  the  young 
children  may  be  attributed  largely  to  the  absence  of  a  white 
mistress,  an  absence  characteristic  of  Jamaica  plantations.  There 
appears  to  have  been  no  white  woman  resident  on  Worthy  Park 
during  the  time  of  this  record.  In  1795  and  perhaps  in  other 
years  the  plantation  had  a  contract  for  medical  service  at  the 
rate  of  £140  a  year. 

"Robert  Price  of  Penzance  in  the  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain 
Esquire"  was  the  absentee  owner  of  Worthy  Park.  His  kins- 
man Rose  Price  Esquire  who  was  in  active  charge  was  not  sal- 
aried but  may  have  received  a  manager's  commission  of  six  per 
cent,  on  gross  crop  sales  as  contemplated  in  the  laws  of  the  col- 
ony. In  addition  there  were  an  overseer  at  £200,  later  £300, 
a  year,  four  bookkeepers  at  £50  to  £60,  a  white  carpenter  at  £120, 
and  a  white  plowman  at  £56,  The  overseer  was  changed  three 
times  during  the  five  years  of  the  record,  and  the  bookkeepers 
were  generally  replaced  annually.  The  bachelor  staff  was  most 
probably  responsible  for  the  mulatto  and  quadroon  offspring  and 
was  doubtless  responsible  also  for  the  occasional  manumission 
of  a  woman  or  child. 

Rewards  for  zeal  in  service  were  given  chiefly  to  the  "drivers" 
or  gang  foremen.  Each  of  these  had  for  example  every  year  a 
"doubled  milled  cloth  colored  great  coat"  costing  lis.  6d.  and  a 
"fine  bound  hat  with  girdle  and  buckle"  costing  los.  6d.  As  a 
more  direct  and  frequent  stimulus  a  quart  of  rum  was  served 
weekly  to  each  of  three  drivers,  three  carpenters,  four  boilers, 
two  head  cattlemen,  two  head  mulemen,  the  "stoke-hole  boat- 
swain," and  the  black  doctor,  and  to  the  foremen  respectively 
of  the  sawyers,  coopers,  blacksmiths,  watchmen,  and  road  wain- 
men,  and  a  pint  weekly  to  the  head  home  wainman,  the  pot- 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  63 

ter,  the  midwife,  and  the  young  children's  field  nurse.  These 
allowances  totaled  about  three  hundred  gallons  yearly.  But  a 
considerably  greater  quantity  than  this  was  distributed,  mostly 
at  Christmas  perhaps,  for  in  1796  for  example  922  gallons  were 
recorded  of  "rum  used  for  the  negroes  on  the  estate."  Upon 
the  birth  of  each  child  the  mother  was  given  a  Scotch  rug  and  a 
silver  dollar. 

No  record  of  whippings  appears  to  have  been  kept,  nor  of 
any  offenses  except  absconding.  Of  the  runaways,  reports  were 
made  to  the  parish  vestry  of  those  lying  out  at  the  end  of  each 
quarter.  At  the  beginning  of  the  record  there  were  no  runaways 
and  at  the  end  there  were  only  four;  but  during  1794  and  1795 
there  were  eight  or  nine  listed  in  each  report,  most  of  whom  were 
out  for  but  a  few  months  each,  but  several  for  a  year  or  two ;  and 
several  furthermore  absconded  a  second  or  third  time  after  re- 
turning. The  runaways  were  heterogeneous  in  age  and  occupa- 
tion, with  more  old  negroes  among  them  than  might  have  been 
expected.  Most  of  them  were  men ;  but  the  women  Ann,  Strumpet 
and  Christian  Grace  made  two  flights  each,  and  the  old  pad- 
mender  Abba's  Moll  stayed  out  for  a  year  and  a  quarter.  A  few 
of  those  recovered  were  returned  through  the  public  agency  of 
the  workhouse.  Some  of  the  rest  may  have  come  back  of  their 
own  accord. 

In  the  summer  of  1795,  when  absconding  had  for  some  time 
been  too  common,  the  recaptured  runaways  and  a  few  other 
offenders  were  put  for  disgrace  and  better  surveillance  into  a 
special  "vagabond  gang,"  This  comprised  Billy  Scott,  who  was 
usually  a  mason  and  sugar  guard,  Oxford  who  as  head  cooper 
had  enjoyed  a  weekly  quart  of  rum,  Cesar  a  sawyer,  and  Moll 
the  old  pad-mender,  along  with  three  men  and  two  women  from 
the  main  gangs,  and  three  half-grown  boys.  The  vagabond  gang 
was  so  wretchedly  assorted  for  industrial  purposes  that  it  was 
probably  soon  disbanded  and  its  members  distributed  to  their 
customary  tasks.  For  use  in  marking  slaves  a  branding  iron 
was  inventoried,  but  in  the  way  of  arms  there  were  merely 
two  muskets,  a  fowling  piece  and  twenty-four  old  guns  without 
locks.     Evidently  no  turbulence  was  anticipated. 


64  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Worthy  Park  bought  nearly  all  of  its  hardware,  dry  goods, 
drugs  and  sundries  in  London,  and  its  herrings  for  the  negroes 
and  salt  pork  and  beef  for  the  white  staff  in  Cork.  Corn  was 
cultivated  between  the  rows  in  some  of  the  cane  fields  on  the 
plantation,  and  some  guinea-corn  was  bought  from  neighbors. 
The  negroes  raised  their  own  yams  and  other  vegetables,  and 
doubtless  pigs  and  poultry  as  well;  and  plantains  were  likely 
to  be  plentiful. 

Every  October  cloth  was  issued  at  the  rate  of  seven  yards 
of  osnaburgs,  three  of  checks,  and  three  of  baize  for  each  adult 
and  proportionately  for  children.  The  first  was  to  be  made  into 
coats,  trousers  and  frocks,  the  second  into  shirts  and  waists,  the 
third  into  bedclothes.  The  cutting  and  sewing  were  done  in 
the  cabins.  A  hat  and  a  cap  were  also  issued  to  each  negro  old 
enough  to  go  into  the  field,  and  a  clasp-knife  to  each  one  above 
the  age  of  the  third  gang.  From  the  large  purchases  of  Scotch 
rugs  recorded  it  seems  probable  that  these  were  issued  on  other 
occasions  than  those  of  childbirth.  As  to  shoes,  however,  the 
record  is  silent. 

The  Irish  provisions  cost  annually  about  £300,  and  the  English 
supplies  about  £1000,  not  including  such  extra  outlays  as  that 
of  ii355  in  1793  for  new  stills,  worms,  and  coppers.  Local  ex- 
penditures were  probably  reckoned  in  currency.  Converted  into 
sterling,  the  salary  list  amounted  to  about  £500,  and  the  local 
outlay  for  medical  services,  wharfage,  and  petty  supplies  came 
to  a  like  amount.  Taxes,  manager's  commissions,  and  the  de- 
preciation of  apparatus  must  have  amounted  collectively  to  iSoo. 
The  net  death-loss  of  slaves,  not  including  that  from  the  break- 
ing-in  of  new  negroes,  averaged  about  two  and  a  quarter  per 
cent.;  that  of  the  mules  and  oxen  ten  per  cent.  When  reck- 
oned upon  the  numbers  on  hand  in  1796  when  the  plantation 
with  470  slaves  was  operating  with  very  little  outside  help,  these 
losses,  which  must  be  replaced  by  new  purchases  if  the  scale 
of  output  was  to  be  maintained,  amounted  to  about  £900.  Thus 
a  total  of  £4000  sterling  is  reached  as  the  average  current  ex- 
pense in  years  when  no  mishaps  occurred. 

The  crops  during  the  years  of  the  record  averaged  311  hogs- 


THE  SUGAR  ISLANDS  65 

heads  of  sugar,  sixteen  hundredweight  each,  and  133  puncheons 
of  rum,  no  gallons  each.  This  was  about  the  common  aver- 
age on  the  island,  of  two-thirds  as  many  hogsheads  as  there 
were  slaves  of  all  ages  on  a  plantation.-^  If  the  prices  had  been 
those  current  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  these  crops 
would  have  yielded  the  proprietor  great  profits.  But  at  £15 
per  hogshead  and  iio  per  puncheon,  the  prices  generally  cur- 
rent in  the  island  in  the  seventeen-nineties,  the  gross  return  was 
but  about  £6000  sterling,  and  the  net  earnings  of  the  establish- 
ment accordingly  not  above  £2000.  The  investment  in  slaves, 
mules  and  oxen  was  about  £28,000,  and  that  in  land,  buildings 
and  equipment  according  to  the  island  authorities,  would  reach 
a  like  sum.^*  The  net  earnings  in  good  years  were  thus  less 
than  four  per  cent,  on  the  investment;  but  the  liability  to 
hurricanes,  earthquakes,  fires,  epidemics  and  mutinies  would 
bring  the  safe  expectations  considerably  lower.  A  mere  pesti- 
lence which  carried  off  about  sixty  mules  and  two  hundred  oxen 
on  Worthy  Park  in  1793- 1794  wiped  out  more  than  a  year's 
earnings. 

In  the  twenty  years  prior  to  the  beginning  of  the  Worthy 
Park  record  more  than  one-third  of  all  the  sugar  plantations  in 
Jamaica  had  gone  through  bankruptcy.  *It  was  generally  agreed 
that,  within  the  limits  of  efficient  operation,  the  larger  an  estate 
was,  the  better  its  prospect  for  net  earnings,  j  But  though  Worthy 
Park  had  more  than  twice  the  number  of  slaves  that  the  average 
plantation  employed,  it  was  barely  paying  its  way. 

In  the  West  Indies  as  a  whole  there  was  a  remarkable  repeti- 
tion of  developments  and  experiences  in  island  after  island, 
similar  to  that  which  occurred  in  the  North  American  planta- 
tion regions,  but  even  more  pronounced.  The  career  of  Barbados 
was  followed  rapidly  by  the  other  Lesser  Antilles  under  the  Eng- 
lish and  French  flags;  these  were  all  exceeded  by  the  greater 
scale  of  Jamaica ;  she  in  turn  yielded  the  primacy  in  sugar  to 
Hayti  only  to  have  that  French  possession,  when  overwhelmed 
by  its  great  negro  insurrection,  give  the  paramount  place  to 

*  Long,  Jamaica,  II,  433,  439. 

**  Edwards,  West  Indies,  book  5,  chap.  3. 


66  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  Spanish  Porto  Rico  and  Cuba.  In  each  case  the  opening  of 
a  fresh  area  under  imperial  encouragement  would  promote 
rapid  immigration  and  vigorous  industry  on  every  scale;  the 
land  would  be  taken  up  first  in  relatively  small  holdings;  the 
prosperity  of  the  pioneers  would  prompt  a  more  systematic  hus- 
bandry and  the  consolidation  of  estates,  involving  the  replace- 
ment of  the  free  small  proprietors  by  slave  gangs ;  but  dimiftish-^ 
ing  fertility  and  intensifying  competition  would  in  the  course  of 
years  more  than  offset  the  improvement  of  system.  Meanwhile 
more  pioneers,  including  perhaps  some  of  those  whom  the  plant- 
ers had  bought  out  in  the  original  colonies,  would  found  new 
settlements;  and  as  these  in  turn  developed,  the  older  colonies 
would  decline  and  decay  in  spite  of  desperate  efforts  by  their 
plantation  proprietors  to  hold  their  own  through  the  increase  of 
investments  and  the  improvement  of  routine.^^ 

*  Herman  Merivale,  Colonisation  and  Colonies   (London,   1841),  pp. 
92,  93. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES 

THE  purposes  of  the  Virginia  Company  of  London  and  of 
the  English  public  which  gave  it  sanction  were  profit  for 
the  investors  and  aggrandizement  for  the  nation,  along 
with  the  reduction  of  pauperism  at  home  and  the  conversion  of 
the  heathen  abroad.  For  income  the  original  promoters  looked 
mainly  toward  a  South  Sea  passage,  gold  mines,  fisheries,  Indian 
trade,  and  the  production  of  silk,  wine  and  naval  stores.  But 
from  the  first  they  were  on  the  alert  for  unexpected  opportuni- 
ties to  be  exploited.  The  following  of  the  line  of  least  resist- 
ance led  before  long  to  the  dominance  of  tobacco  culture,  then 
of  the  plantation  system,  and  eventually  of  negro  slavery.  At 
the  outset,  however,  these  developments  were  utterly  unforeseen. 
In  short,  Virginia  was  launched  with  varied  hopes  and  vague 
expectations.  The  project  was  on  the  knees  of  the  gods,  which 
for  a  time  proved  a  place  of  extreme  discomfort  and  peril. 

The  first  comers  in  the  spring  of  1607,  numbering  a  bare  hun- 
dred men  and  no  women,  were  moved  by  the  spirit  of  adventure. 
With  a  cumbrous  and  oppressive  government  over  them,  and 
with  no  private  ownership  of  land  nor  other  encouragement 
for  steadygoing  thrift,  the  only  chance  for  personal  gain  was 
through  a  stroke  of  discovery.  No  wonder  the  loss  of  time 
and  strength  in  futile  excursions.  No  wonder  the  disheartening 
reaction  in  the  malaria-stricken  camp  of  Jamestown. 

A  second  hundred  men  arriving  early  in  1608  found  but  forty 
of  the  first  alive.  The  combined  forces  after  lading  the  ships 
with  "gilded  dirt"  and  cedar  logs,  were  left  facing  the  battle 
with  Indians  and  disease.  The  dirt  when  it  reached  London 
proved  valueless,  and  the  cedar,  of  course,  worth  little.  The 
company  that  summer  sent  further  recruits  including  two  women 
and  several  Poles  and  Germans  to  make  soap-ashes,  glass  and 

67 


68  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

pitch — "skilled  workmen  from  foraine  parts  which  may  t^ach 
and  set  ours  in  the  way  where  we  may  set  thousands  a  work  in 
these  such  Hke  services."  ^  At  the  same  time  it  instructed  the 
captain  of  the  ship  to  explore  and  find  either  a  lump  of  gold,  the 
South  Sea  passage,  or  some  of  Raleigh's  lost  colonists,  and  it 
sent  the  officials  at  Jamestown  peremptory  notice  that  unless  the 
£2000  spent  on  the  present  supply  be  met  by  the  proceeds  of 
the  ship's  return  cargo,  the  settlers  need  expect  no  further  aid. 
The  shrewd  and  redoubtable  Captain  John  Smith,  now  president 
in  the  colony,  opposed  the  vain  explorings,  and  sent  the  council 
in  London  a  characteristic  "rude  letter."  The  ship,  said  he,  kept 
nearly  all  the  victuals  for  its  crew,  while  the  settlers,  "the  one 
halfe  sicke,  the  other  little  better,"  had  as  their  diet  "a  little 
meale  and  water,  and  not  sufficient  of  that."  The  foreign  ex- 
perts had  been  set  at  their  assigned  labors;  but  "it  were  better 
to  give  five  hundred  pound  a  tun  for  those  grosse  commodities 
in  Denmarke  than  send  for  them  hither  till  more  necessary 
things  be  provided.  For  in  over-toyling  our  weake  and  unskil- 
full  bodies  to  satisfie  this  desire  of  present  profit  we  can  scarce 
ever  recover  ourselves  from  one  supply  to  another.  .  .  .  As  yet 
you  must  not  looke  for  any  profitable  returnes."  -^ 

This  unwelcome  advice  while  daunting  all  mercenary  pro- 
moters gave  spur  to  strong-hearted  patriots.  The  prospect  of 
profits  was  gone ;  the  hope  of  an  overseas  empire  survived. 
The  London  Company,  with  a  greatly  improved  charter,  appealed 
to  the  public  through  sermons,  broadsides,  pamphlets,  and  per- 
sonal canvassing,  with  such  success  that  subscriptions  to  its 
stock  poured  in  from  "lords,  knights,  gentlemen  and  others," 
including  the  trade  guilds  and  the  town  corporations.  In  lieu  of 
cash  dividends  the  company  promised  that  after  a  period  of  seven 
years,  during  which  the  settlers  were  to  work  on  the  company's 
account  and  any  surplus  earnings  were  to  be  spent  on  the  colony 
or  funded,  a  dividend  in  land  would  be  issued.  In  this  the  set- 
tlers were  to  be  embraced  as  if  instead  of  emigrating  each  of 

*  Alexander  Brown,  The  First  Republic  in  America  (Boston,  1898),  p. 
68. 

"Capt.  John  Smith,  Works,  Arber  ed.  (Birmingham,  1884),  PP-  442-445- 
Smith's  book,  it  should  be  said,  is  the  sole  source  for  this  letter. 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  69 

them  had  invested  £12  10s.  in  a  share  of  stock.  Several  hundred 
recruits  were  sent  in  1609,  and  many  more  in  the  following 
years ;  but  from  the  successive  governors  at  Jamestown  came 
continued  reports  of  disease,  famine  and  prostration,  and  pleas 
ever  for  more  men  and  supplies.  The  company,  bravely  keep- 
ing up  its  race  with  the  death  rate,  met  all  demands  as  best  it 
could. 

To  establish  a  firmer  control,  Sir  Thomas  Dale  was  sent  out  in 
161 1  as  high  marshal  along  with  Sir  Thomas  Gates  as  governor. 
Both  of  these  were  men  of  military  training,  and  they  carried 
with  them  a  set  of  stringent  regulations  quite  in  keeping  witK 
their  personal  proclivities.  These  rulers  properly  regarded  their 
functions  as  more  industrial  than  political.  They  for  the  first 
time  distributed  the  colonists  into  a  series  of  settlements  up  and 
down  the  river  for  farming  and  live-stock  tending ;  they  spurred 
the  willing  workers  by  assigning  them  three-acre  private  gar- 
dens; and  they  mercilessly  coerced  the  laggard.  They  trans- 
formed the  colony  from  a  distraught  camp  into  a  group  of 
severely  disciplined  farms,  owned  by  the  London  Company,  ad- 
ministered by  its  officials,  and  operated  partly  by  its  servants, 
partly  by  its  tenants  who  paid  rent  in  the  form  of  labor.  That 
is  to  say,  Virginia  was  put  upon  a  schedule  of  plantation  rou- 
tine, producing  its  own  food  supply  and  wanting  for  the  be- 
ginning of  prosperity  only  a  marketable  crop.  This  was  promptly 
supplied  through  John  Rolfe's  experiment  in  1612  in  raising  to- 
bacco. The  English  people  were  then  buying  annually  some 
£200,000  worth  of  that  commodity,  mainly  from  the  Spanish 
West  Indies,  at  prices  which  might  be  halved  or  quartered  and 
yet  pay  the  freight  and  yield  substantial  earnings;  and  so  rapid 
was  the  resort  to  the  staple  in  Virginia  that  soon  the  very  mar- 
ket place  in  Jamestown  was  planted  in  it.  The  government  in 
fact  had  to  safeguard  the  food  supply  by  forbidding  anyone  to 
plant  tobacco  until  he  had  put  two  acres  in  grain. 

When  the  Gates-Dale  administration  ended,  the  seven  year 
period  from  1609  was  on  the  point  of  expiry;  but  the  temptation 
of  earnings  from  tobacco  persuaded  the  authorities  to  delay  the 
land  dividend.     Samuel  Argall,  the  new  governor,   while  con- 


70  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tinuing  the  stringent  discipline,  robbed  the  company  for  his  own 
profit;  and  the  news  of  his  misdeeds  reaching  London  in  1618 
discredited  the  faction  in  the  company  which  had  supported  his 
regime.  The  capture  of  control  by  the  liberal  element  among 
the  stockholders,  led  by  Edwin  Sandys  and  the  Earl  of  South- 
ampton, was  promptly  signalized  by  measures  for  converting 
Virginia  into  a  commonwealth.  A  land  distribution  was  pro- 
vided on  a  generous  scale,  and  Sir  George  Yeardley  was  dis- 
patched as  governor  with  instructions  to  call  a  representative  as- 
sembly of  the  people  to  share  in  the  making  of  laws.  The  land 
warrants  were  issued  at  the  rate  of  a  hundred  acres  on  each  share 
of  stock  and  a  similar  amount  to  each  colonist  of  the  time,  to 
be  followed  in  either  case  by  the  grant  of  a  second  hundred 
acres  upon  proof  that  the  first  had  been  improved;  and  fifty 
acres  additional  in  reward  for  the  future  importation  of  every 
laborer. 

While  the  company  continued  as  before  to  send  colonists  on 
its  own  account,  notably  craftsmen,  indigent  London  children, 
and  young  women  to  become  wives  for  the  bachelor  settlers,  it 
now  offered  special  stimulus  to  ^its  members  to,  supplement  its 
exertions.  To  this  end  it  provided  that  groups  of  its  stockhold- 
ers upon  organizing  themselves  into  sub-companies  or  partner- 
ships might  consolidate  their  several  grants  into  large  units  called 
particular  plantations;  and  it  ordered  that  "such  captaines  or 
leaders  of  perticulerr  plantations  that  shall  goe  there  to  inhabite 
by  vertue  of  their  graunts  and  plant  themselves,  their  tenants 
and  servants  in  Virginia,  shall  have  liberty  till  a  forme  of  gov- 
ernment be  here  settled  for  them,  associatinge  unto  them  divers 
of  the  gravest  and  discreetes  of  their  companies,  to  make  orders, 
ordinances  and  constitutions  for  the  better  orderinge  and  dyrect- 
inge  of  their  servants  and  buisines,  provided  they  be  not  repug- 
nant to  the  lawes  of  England."  ^ 

To  embrace  this  opportunity  some  fifty  grants  for  particular 
plantations  were  taken  out  during  the  remaining  life  of  the 
London  Company.     Among  them  were  Southampton  Hundred 

'Records  of  the  Virginia  Company  of  London,  Kingsbury  ed.  (Wash- 
ington, 1906),  I,  303. 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  71 

and  Martin's  Hundred,  to  each  of  which  two  or  three  hundred 
settlers  were  sent  prior  to  1620,*  and  Berkeley  Hundred  whose 
records  alone  are  available.  The  grant  for  this  last  was  issued 
in  February,  1619,  to  a  missionary  enthusiast,  George  Thorpe, 
and  his  partners,  whose  collective  holdings  of  London  Company 
stock  amounted  to  thirty-five  shares.  To  them  was  given  and 
promised  land  in  proportion  to  stock  and  settlers,  together  with 
a  bonus  of -1500  acres  in  view  of  their  project  for  converting 
the  Indians.  Their  agent  in  residence  was  as  usual  vested  with 
public  authority  over  the  dwellers  on  the  domain,  limited  only 
by  the  control  of  the  Virginia  government  in  military  matters 
and  in  judicial  cases  on  appeal.^  After  delays  from  bad  weather, 
the  initial  expedition  set  sail  in  September  comprising  John'^'-y 
Woodleaf  as  captain  and  thirty-four  other  men  of  diverse  trades  ] 
bound  to  service  for  terms  ranging  from  three  to  eight  years  at  / 
varying  rates  of  compensation.  Several  of  these  were  designated  / 
respectively  as  officers  of  the  guard,  keeper  of  the  stores,  care- 
taker of  arms  and  implements,  usher  of  the  hall,  and  clerk  of  the 
kitchen.  Supplies  of  provisions  and  equipment  were  carried,  and 
instructions  in  detail  for  the  building  of  houses,  the  fencing  of 
land,  the  keeping  of  watch,  and  the  observances  of  religion. 
Next  spring  the  settlement,  which  had  been  planted  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Appomattox  River,  was  joined  by  Thorpe  himself, 
and  in  the  following  autumn  by  William  Tracy  who  had  entered 
the  partnership  and  now  carried  his  own  family  together  with  a 
preadie-r-aird-^ome  forty  servants.  Among  these  were  nine  women 
and  the  two  children  of  a  man  who  had  gone  over  the  year  before. 
As  giving  light  upon  indented  servitude  in  the  period  it  may 
be  noted  that  many  of  those  sent  to  Berkeley  Hundred  were 
described  as  "gentlemen,"  and  that  five  of  them  within  the  first 
year  besought  their  masters  to  send  them  each  two  indented 
servants  for  their  use  and  at  their  expense.  Tracy's  vessel  how- 
ever was  too  small  to  carry  all  whom  it  was  desired  to  send. 

*  Records  of  the  Virginia  Company  of  London,  Kingsbury  ed.  (Wash- 
ington, 1906),  I,  350. 

'The  records  of  this  enterprise  (the  Smyth  of  Nibley  papers)  have 
been  printed  in  the  New  York  Public  Library  Bulletin,  III,  160-171,  208- 
233,  248-258,  276-295. 


72  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

It  was  in  fact  so  crowded  with  plantation  supplies  that  Tracy 
wrote  on  the  eve  of  sailing:  "I  have  throw  out  mani  things  of 
my  own  yet  is  ye  midill  and  upper  extre[m]li  pestered  so  that 
ouer  men  will  not  lie  like  men  and  ye  mareners  hath  not  rome 
to  stir  God  is  abel  in  ye  gretest  weknes  to  helpe  we  will  trust 
to  marsi  for  he  must  help  be  yond  hope."  Fair  winds  appear 
to  have  carried  the  vessel  to  port,  whereupon  Tracy  and  Thorpe 
jointly  took  charge  of  the  plantation,  displacing  Woodleaf  whose 
services  had  given  dissatisfaction.  Beyond  this  point  the  records 
are  extremely  scant;  but  it  may  be  gathered  that  the  plantation 
was  wrecked  and  most  of  its  inhabitants,  including  Thorpe,  slain 
in  the  great  Indian  massacre  of  1622,  The  restoration  of  the 
enterprise  was  contemplated  in  an  after  year,  but  eventually  the 
land  was  sold  to  other  persons. 

The  fate  of  Berkeley  Hundred  was  at  the  same  time  the  fate 
of  most  others  of  the  same  sort;  and  the  extinction  of  the  Lon- 
don Company  in  1624  ended  the  granting  of  patents  on  that 
plan.  The  owners  of  the  few  surviving  particular  plantations, 
furthermore,  found  before  long  that  ownership  by  groups  of 
absentees  was  poorly  suited  to  the  needs  of  the  case,  and  that 
the  exercise  of  public  jurisdiction  was  of  more  trouble  than  it 
was  worth.  The  particular  plantation  system  proved  accordingly 
but  an  episode,  yet  it  furnished  a  transition,  which  otherwise 
might  not  readily  have  been  found,  from  Virginia  the  planta- 
tion of  the  London  Company,  to  Virginia  the  colony  of  private 
plantations  and  farms.  When  settlement  expanded  afresh  after 
the  Indians  were  driven  away  many  private  estates  gradually 
arose  to  follow  the  industrial  routine  of  those  which  had  been 
called  particular. 

The  private  plantations  were  hampered  in  their  development 
i  by  dearth  of  capital  and  labor  and  by  the  extremely  low  prices 
/  of  tobacco  which  began  at  the  end  of  the  sixteen-twenties  as  a 
'i  consequence  of  overproduction.  But  by  dint  of  good  manage- 
i  ment  and  the  diversification  of  their  industry  the  exceptional 
/  men  led  the  way  to  prosperity  and  the  dignity  which  it  carried. 
'•  Of  Captain  Samuel  Matthews,  for  example,  "an  old  Planter  of 
'     above  thirty  years  standing,"  whose  estabHshment  was  at  Blunt 


/ 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES 


73 


Point  on  the  lower  James,  it  was  written  in  1648:  "He  hath 
a  fine  house  and  all  things  answerable  to  it;  he  sowes  yeerly 
store  of  hempe  and  flax,  and  causes  it  to  be  spun;  he  keeps 
weavers,  and  hath  a  tan-house,  causes  leather  to  be  dressed,  hath 
eight  shoemakers  employed  in  this  trade,  hath  forty  negroe  serv- 
ants, brings  them  up  to  trades  in  his  house:  he  yeerly  sowes 
abundance  of  wheat,  barley,  etc.  The  wheat  he  selleth  at  four 
shillings  the  bushell;  kills  store  of  beeves,  and  sells  them  to 
victuall  the  ships  when  they  come  thither;  hath  abundance  of 
kine,  a  brave  dairy,  swine  great  store,  and  poltery.  He  mar- 
ried the  daughter  of  Sir  Tho.  Hinton,  and  in  a  word,  keeps  a 
good  house,  lives  bravely,  and  a  true  lover  of  Virginia.  He  is 
worthy  of  much  honour."  *  Many  other  planters  were  thriving 
more  modestly,  most  of  them  giving  nearly  all  their  attention  to 
the  one  crop.  The  tobacco  output  was  of  course  increasing 
prodigiously.  The  export  from  Virginia  in  1619  had  amounted 
to  twenty  thousand  pounds;  that  from  Virginia  and  Maryland 
in  1664  aggregated  fifty  thousand  hogsheads  of  about  five  hun- 
dred pounds  each.'^ 

The  labor  problem  was  almost  wholly  that  of  getting  and 
managing  bondsmen.  Land  in  the  colony  was  virtually  to  be 
had  for  the  taking;  and  in  general  no  freemen  arriving  in  the 
colony  would  engage  for  such  wages  as  employers  could  afford  to 
pay.  Workers  must  be  imported.  Many  in  England  were  willing 
to  come,  and  more  could  be  persuaded  or  coerced,  if  their 
passage  were  paid  and  employment  assured.  To  this  end  in- 
dentured servitude  had  already  been  inaugurated  by  the  Lon- 
don Company  as  a  modification  of  the  long  used  system  of  ap- 
prenticeship. And  following  that  plan,  ship  captains  brought 
hundreds,  then  thousands  of  laborers  a  year  and  sold  their  in- 
dentures to  the  planters  either  directly  or  through  dealers  in 
such  merchandize.  The  courts  took  the  occasion  to  lessen  the 
work  of  the  hangman  by  sentencing  convicts  to  deportation  in 
servitude;  the  government  rid  itself  of  political  prisoners  dur- 

*A  Perfect  Description  of  Virginia  (London,  1649),  reprinted  in  Peter 
Force  Tracts,  vol.  II. 

'  Bruce,  Economic  History  of  Virginia  in  the  Seventeenth  Century  (New 
York,  1896),  I,  391. 


74  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

ing  the  civil  war  by  the  same  method ;  and  when  servant  prices 
rose  the  supply  was  further  swelled  by  the  agency  of  profes- 
sional kidnappers. 

The  bondage  varied  as  to  its  terms,  with  two  years  apparently 
the  minimum.  The  compensation  varied  also  from  mere  trans- 
portation and  sustenance  to  a  pa)rment  in  advance  and  a  stipula- 
tion for  outfit  in  clothing,  foodstuffs  and  diverse  equipment  at 
the  end  of  service.  The  quality  of  redemptioners  varied  from 
the  very  dregs  of  society  to  well-to-do  apprentice  planters;  but 
the  general  run  was  doubtless  fairly  representative  of  the  Eng- 
lish working  classes.  Even  the  convicts  under  the  terrible  laws 
of  that  century  were  far  from  all  being  depraved.  This  labor  in 
all  its  grades,  however,  had  serious  drawbacks.  Its  first  cost 
was  fairly  heavy ;  it  was  liable  to  an  acclimating  fever  with  a  high 
death  rate ;  its  term  generally  expired  not  long  after  its  adjust- 
ment and  training  were  completed ;  and  no  sooner  was  its  service 
over  than  it  set  up  for  itself,  often  in  tobacco  production,  to 
compete  with  its  former  employers  and  depress  the  price  of 
produce.  If  the  plantation  system  were  to  be  perpetuated  an  en- 
tirely different  labor  supply  must  be  had. 

"About  the  last  of  August  came  in  a  Dutch  man  of  warre  that 
sold  us  twenty  negars."  Thus  wrote  John  Rolfe  in  a  report  of 
happenings  in  i6i9;'  and  thus,  after  much  antiquarian  dispute, 
the  matter  seems  to  stand  as  to  the  first  bringing  of  negroes  to 
Virginia.  The  man-of-war,  or  more  accurately  the  privateer^^ 
had  taken  them  from  a  captured  slaver,  and  it  seems  to  have 
sold  them  to  the  colonial  government  itself,  which  in  turn  sold 
them  to  private  settlers.  At  the  beginning  of  1625,  when  a 
census  of  the  colony  was  made,"  the  negroes,  then  increased  to 
twenty-three  in  a  total  population  of  1232  of  which  about  one- 
half  were  white  servants,  were  distributed  in  seven  localities 
along  the  James  River.  In  1630  a  second  captured  cargo  was 
sold  in  the  colony,  and  from  1635  onward  small  lots  were  im- 
ported nearly  every  year.*"    Part  of  these  came  from  England, 

•John  Smith  Works,  Arber  ed.,  p.  541. 
•  Tabulated  in  the  Virginia  Magasine,  VII,  364-367. 
"Bruce,  Economic  History  of  Virginia,  II,  72-77. 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONffiS  75 

part  from  New  Netherland  and  most  of  the  remainder  doubtless 
from  the  West  Indies.  In  1649  Virginia  was  reckoned  to  have 
some  three  hundred  negroes  mingled  with  its  fifteen  thousand 
whites.^^  After  two  decades  of  a  somewhat  more  rapid  importa- 
tion Governor  Berkeley  estimated  the  gross  population  in  1671  at 
forty  thousand,  including  six  thousand  white  servants  and  two 
thousand  negro  slaves.^'  Ere  this  there  was  also  a  small  num- 
ber of  free  negroes.  But  not  imtil  near  the  end  of  the  century, 
when  the  English  government  had  restricted  kidnapping,  when 
the  Virginia  assembly  had  forbidden  the  bringing  in  of  convicts, 
and  when  the  direct  trade  from  Guinea  had  reached  considerable 
dimensions,  did  the  negroes  begin  to  form  the  bulk  of  the  Vir- 
ginia plantation  gangs. 

Thus  for  two  generations  the  negroes  were  few,  they  were 
employed  alongside  the  white  servants,  and  in  many  cases  were 
members  of  their  masters'  households.  They  had  by  far  the 
best  opportunity  which  any  of  their  race  had  been  given  in 
America  to  learn  the  white  men's  ways  and  to  adjust  the  lines 
of  their  bondage  into  as  pleasant  places  as  might  be.  Their  im- 
portation was,  for  the  time,  on  but  an  experimental  scale,  and 
even  their  legal  status  was  during  the  early  decades  indefinite. 

The  first  comers  were  slaves  in  the  hands  of  their  maritime 
sellers;  but  they  were  not  fully  slaves  in  the  hands  of  their 
Virginian  buyers,  for  there  was  neither  law  nor  custom  then  es- 
tablishing the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  colony.  The  documents 
of  the  times  point  clearly  to  a  vague  tenure.  In  the  county  court 
records  prior  to  1661  the  negroes  are  called  negro  servants  or 
merely  negroes — never,  it  appears,  definitely  slaves.  A  few  were 
expressly  described  as  servants  for  terms  of  years,  and  others 
were  conceded  property  rights  of  a  sort  incompatible  with  the 
institution  of  slavery  as  elaborated  in  later  times.  Some  of  the 
blacks  were  in  fact  liberated  by  the  courts  as  having  served  out 
the  terms  fixed  either  by  their  indentures  or  by  the  custom  of  the 
country.  By  the  middle  of  the  century  several  had  become  free 
landowners,  and  at  least  one  of  them  owned  a  n^^^  servant  who 

'^A  New  Description  of  Virgima  (London,  1649). 

"  W.  W.  Hening,  Statutes  at  Large  of  Virginia,  II,  515. 


76  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

went  to  court  for  his  freedom  but  was  denied  it  because  he  could 
not  produce  the  indenture  which  he  claimed  to  have  possessed. 
Nevertheless  as  early  as  the  sixteen-forties  the  holders  of  negroes 
were  falling  into  the  custom  of  considering  them,  and  on  occasion 
selling  them  along  with  the  issue  of  the  females,  as  servants  for 
life  and  perpetuity.  The  fact  that  negroes  not  bound  for  a  term 
were  coming  to  be  appraised  as  high  as  £30,  while  the  most  valu- 
able white  redemptioners  were  worth  not  above  £15  shows  also 
the  tendency  toward  the  crystallization  of  slavery  before  any 
statutory  enactments  declared  its  existence.^' 

Until  after  the  middle  of  the  century  the  laws  did  not  dis- 
criminate in  any  way  between  the  races.  The  tax  laws  were  an 
index  of  the  situation.  The  act  of  1649,  for  example,  confined 
the  poll  tax  to  male  inhabitants  of  all  sorts  above  sixteen  years 
old.  But  the  act  of  1658  added  imported  female  negroes,  along 
with  Indian  female  servants ;  and  this  rating  of  negro  women  as 
men  for  tax  purposes  was  continued  thenceforward  as  a  per- 
manent practice.  A  special  act  of  1668,  indeed,  gave  sharp  asser- 
tion to  the  policy  of  using  taxation  as  a  token  of  race  distinc- 
tion: "Whereas  some  doubts  have  arisen  whether  negro  women 
set  free  were  still  to  be  accompted  tithable  according  to  a  former 
act,  it  is  declared  by  this  grand  assembly  that  negro  women, 
though  permitted  to  enjoy  their  freedome  yet  ought  not  in  all 
respects  to  be  admitted  to  a  full  fruition  of  the  exemptions  and 
impunities  of  the  English,  and  are  still  liable  to  the  payment 
of  taxes."  " 

As  to  slavery  itself,  the  earliest  laws  giving  it  mention  did  not 
establish  the  institution  but  merely  recognized  it,  first  indirectly 
then  directly,  as  in  existence  by  force  of  custom.  The  initial 
act  of  this  series,  passed  in  1656,  promised  the  Indian  tribes  that 
when  they  sent  hostages  the  Virginians  would  not  "use  them  as 
slaves."  *"  The  next,  an  act  of  1660,  removing  impediments  to 
trade  by  the  Dutch  and  other  foreigners,  contemplated  specifi- 
cally their  bringing  in  of  "negro  slaves."  ^'    The  third,  in  the  fol- 

"The  substance  of  this  paragraph  is  drawn  mainly  from  the  illuminat- 
ing discussion  of  J.  H.  Russell,  The  Free  Negro  in  Virginia  (Johns  Hop- 
kins University  Studies,  XXXI,  no.  3,  Baltimore,  1913),  pp.  24-35. 

**  W.  W.  Hening,  Statutes  at  Large  of  Virginia,  I,  361,  454;  II,  267. 

*'Ibid.,  I,  396.  ^Ibid..  540. 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  tj 

lowing  year,  enacted  that  if  any  white  servants  ran  away  in 
company  with  "any  negroes  who  are  incapable  of  making  satis- 
faction by  addition  of  time,"  the  white  fugitives  must  serve  for 
the  time  of  the  negroes'  absence  in  addition  to  suflfering  the 
usual  penalties  on  their  own  score.*^  A  negro  whose  time  of 
service  could  not  be  extended  must  needs  have  been  a  servant 
for  life — in  other  words  a  slave.  Then  in  1662  it  was  enacted  that 
"whereas  some  doubts  have  arrisen  whether  children  got  by  any 
Englishman  upon  a  negro  woman  shall  be  slave  or  free,  .  .  . 
all  children  bom  in  this  colony  shall  be  bond  or  free  only  ac- 
cording to  the  condition  of  the  mother."  *'  Thus  within  six 
years  from  the  first  mention  of  slaves  in  the  Virginia  laws,  slav- 
ery was  definitely  recognized  and  established  as  the  hereditary 
legal  status  of  such  negroes  and  mulattoes  as  might  be  held  there- 
in. Eighteen  years  more  elapsed  before  a  distinctive  police  law 
for  slaves  was  enacted ;  but  from  1680  onward  the  laws  for  their 
control  were  as  definite  and  for  the  time  being  virtually  as 
stringent  as  those  which  in  the  same  period  were  being  enacted 
in  Barbados  and  Jamaica, 

In  the  first  decade  or  two  after  the  London  Company's  end 
the  plantation  and  farm  clearings  broke  the  Virginian  wilderness 
only  in  a  narrow  line  on  either  bank  of  the  James  River  from 
its  mouth  to  near  the  present  site  of  Richmond,  and  in  a  small 
district  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Chesapeake.  Virtually  all 
the  settlers  were  then  raising  tobacco,  all  dwelt  at  the  edge  of 
navigable  water,  and  all  were  neighbors  to  the  Indians.  As 
further  decades  passed  the  similar  shores  of  the  parallel  rivers 
to  the  northward,  the  York,  then  the  Rappahannock  and  the 
Potomac,  were  occupied  in  a  similar  way,  though  with  an  in- 
creasing predominance  of  large  landholdings.  This  broadened 
the  colony  and  gave  it  a  shape  conducive  to  more  easy  frontier 
defence.  It  also  led  the  way  to  an  eventual  segregation  of  in- 
dustrial pursuits,  for  the  tidewater  peninsulas  were  gradually 
occupied  more  or  less  completely  by  the  planters ;  while  the  farm- 
ers of  less  estate,  weaned  from  tobacco  by  its  fall  in  price,  tended 

"  Hening,  II,  26. 
^Ibid.,  170. 


78  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

to  move  west  and  south  to  new  areas  on  the  mainland,  where 
they  dwelt  in  self-sufficing  democratic  neighborhoods,  and  formed 
incidentally  a  buffer  between  the  plantations  on  the  seaboard  and 
the  Indians  round  about 

With  the  lapse  of  years  the  ntmiber  of  planters  increased, 
partly  through  the  division  of  estates,  partly  through  the  immi- 
gration of  propertied  Englishmen,  and  partly  through  the  rise 
of  exceptional  yeomen  to  the  planting  estate.  The  farmers  in- 
creased with  still  greater  speed;  for  the  planters  in  recruiting 
their  gangs  of  indented  laborers  were  serving  constantly  as  immi- 
gration agents  and  as  constantly  the  redemptioners  upon  com- 
pleting their  terms  were  becoming  yeomen,  marrying  and  mul- 
tiplying. Meanwhile  the  expansion  of  Maryland  was  extending 
an  identical  regime  of  planters  and  farmers  from  the  northern 
bank  of  the  Potomac  round  the  head  of  the  Chesapeake  all  the 
way  to  the  eastern  shore  settlements  of  Virginia. 

In  Maryland  the  personal  proprietorship  of  Lord  Baltimore 
and  his  desire  to  found  a  Catholic  haven  had  no  lasting  effect 
upon  the  industrial  and  social  development.  The  geographical 
conditions  were  so  like  those  in  Virginia  and  the  adoption  of 
her  system  so  obviously  the  road  to  success  that  no  other  plans 
were  long  considered.  Even  the  few  variations  atten^ted  as- 
similated themselves  more  or  less  promptly  to  the  regime  of  the 
older  colony.  The  career  of  the  manor  system  is  typical.  The 
introduction  of  that  medieval  regime  was  authorized  by  the 
charter  for  Maryland  and  was  provided  for  in  turn  by  the  Lord 
Proprietor's  instructions  to  the  governor.  Every  grant  of  one 
thousand,  later  two  thousand  acres,  was  to  be  made  a  manor, 
with  its  appropriate  court  to  settle  differences  between  lord  and 
tenant,  to  adjudge  civil  cases  between  tenants  where  the  issues 
involved  did  not  exceed  the  value  of  two  pounds  sterling,  and  .to 
have  cognizance  of  misdemeanors  committed  on  the  manor.  The 
fines  and  other  profits  were  to  go  to  the  manorial  lord. 

Many  of  these  grants  were  made,  and  in  a  few  instances  the 
manorial  courts  duly  held  their  sessions.  For  St.  Clement's 
Manor,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Potomac,  for  example,  court  rec- 
ords between  1659  and  1672  are  extant    John  Ryvcs,  steward 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  79 

of  Thomas  Gerard  the  proprietor,  presided ;  Richard  Foster  as- 
sisted as  the  elected  bailiff;  and  the  classified  freeholders,  lease- 
holders, "essoines"  and  residents  served  as  the  "jury  and  hom- 
ages." Characteristic  findings  were  "that  Samuell  Harris  broke 
the  peace  with  a  stick";  that  John  Mansell  illegally  entertained 
strangers;  that  land  lines  "are  at  this  present  unperfect  and 
very  obscure" ;  that  a  Cheptico  Indian  had  stolen  a  shirt  from 
Edward  Turner's  house,  for  which  he  is  duly  fined  "if  he  can 
be  knowne" ;  "that  the  lord  of  the  mannor  hath  not  provided  a 
paire  of  stocks,  pillory  and  ducking  stoole — Ordered  that  these 
instruments  of  justice  be  provided  by  the  next  court  by  a  gen- 
erall  contribution  throughout  the  manor";  that  certain  freehold- 
ers had  failed  to  appear,  "to  do  their  suit  at  the  lord's  court, 
wherefore  they  are  amerced  each  man  50I.  of  tobacco  to  the 
lord";  that  Joshua  Lee  had  injured  "Jno.  Hoskins  his  hoggs  by 
setting  his  doggs  on  them  and  tearing  their  eares  and  other  hurts, 
for  which  he  is  fined  icxdI.  of  tobacco  and  caske";  "that  upon 
the  death  of  Mr.  Robte  Sly  there  is  a  reliefe  due  to  the  lord 
and  that  Mr.  Gerard  Sly  is  his  next  heire,  who  hath  sworne 
fealty  accordingly."  ^*         '^ 

St.  Clement's  was  probably  almost  unique  in  its  perseverance 
as  a  true  manor;  and  it  probably  discarded  its  medieval  ma- 
chinery not  long  after  the  end  of  the  existing  record.  In  gen- 
eral, since  public  land  was  to  be  had  virtually  free  in  reward 
for  immigration  whether  in  freedom  or  service,  most  of  the  so- 
called  manors  doubtless  procured  neither  leaseholders  nor 
essoines  nor  any  other  sort  of  tenants,  and  those  of  them  which 
survived  as  estates  found  their  salvation  in  becoming  private 
plantations  with  servant  and  slave  gangs  tilling  their  tobacco 
fields.  In  short,  the  Maryland  manors  began  and  ended  much  as 
the  Virginia  particular  plantations  had  done  before  them.  Mary- 
land on  the  whole  assumed  the  features  of  her  elder  sister.  Her 
tobacco  was  of  lower  grade,  partly  because  of  her  long  delay 
in  providing  public  inspection ;  her  people  in  consequence  were 
generally  less  prosperous,  her  plantations   fewer  in  proportion 

"John  Johnson,  Old  Maryland  Manors  (Johns  Hopkins  University 
Studies,  I,  no.  7,  Baltimore.  1883),  PP-  31-38. 


8o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

to  her  farms,  and  her  labor  supply  more  largely  of  convicts  and 
other  white  servants  and  correspondingly  less  of  negroes.  But 
aside  from  these  variations  in  degree  the  developments  and 
tendigncies  in  the  one  were  virtually  those  of  the  other. 
'"  Before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  William  Fitzhugh 
of  "Virginia  wrote  that  his  plantations  were  being  worked  by 
^'fine  crews"  of  negroes,  the  majority  of  whom  were  natives  of 
the  colony.  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Digges  owned  io8  slaves,-  John 
Carter  io6,  Ralph  Wormeley  91,  Robert  Beverly  42,  Nathaniel 
Bacon,  Sr.,  40,  and  various  other  proprietors  proportionate 
numbers. ^°  The  conquest  of  the  wilderness  was  wellnigh  com- 
plete on  tidewater,  and  the  plantation  system  had  reached  its 
full  type,  for  the  Chesapeake. latitudes.  Broad"  forest  stretches 
divided  most  of  the  plantations  from  one  another  and  often  sepa- 
rated the  several  fields  on  the  same  estate ;  but  the  cause  of  this 
was  not  so  much  the  paucity  of  population  as  the  character  of 
the  land  and  the  prevalent  industry.  The  sandy  expanses,  and 
the  occasional  belts  of  clay  likewise,  had  but  a  surface  fertility, 
and  the  cheapness  of  land  prevented  the  conservation  of  the 
soil.  Hence  the  fields  when  rapidly  exhausted  by  successive 
cropping  in  tobacco  were  as  a  rule  abandoned  to  broomsedge  and 
scrub  timber  while  new  and  still  newer  grounds  were  cleared 
and  cropped.  Each  estate  therefore,  if  its  owner  expected  it  to 
last  a  lifetime,  must  comprise  an  area  in  forestry  much  larger 
than  that  at  any  one  time  in  tillage.  The  great  reaches  of  the 
bay  and  the  deep  tidal  rivers,  furthermore,  afforded  such  mul- 
titudinous places  of  landing  for  ocean-going  ships  that  all  efforts 
to  modify  the  wholly  rural  condition  of  the  tobacco  colonies  by 
concentrating  settlement  were  thwarted.  It  is  true  that  Norfolk 
and  Baltimore  grew  into  consequence  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury; but  the  one  throve  mainly  on  the  trade  of  landlocked  North 
Carolina,  and  the  other  on  that  of  Pennsylvania.  Not  until  the 
plantation  area  had  spread  well  into  the  piedmont  hinterland  did 
Richmond  and  her  sister  towns  near  the  falls  on  the  rivers  begin 
to  focus  Virginia  and  Maryland  trade;  and  even  they  had  little 
influence  upon  life  on  the  tidewater  peninsulas. 
*"  Bruce,  Economic  History  of  Virginia,  II,  88. 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  8r 

The  third  tobacco-producing  colony.  North  Carolina,  was  the 
product  of  secondary  colonization.  Virginia's  expansion  hap- 
pened to  send  some  of  her  people  across  the  boundary,  where 
upon  finding  themselves  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Lord  Pro- 
prietors of  Carolina  they  took  pains  to  keep  that  authority  upon 
a  strictly  nominal  basis.  The  first  comers,  about  1660,  and  most 
of  those  who  followed,  were  and  continued  to  be  small  farmers ; 
but  in  the  course  of  decades  a  considerable  number  of  planta- 
tions arose  in  the  fertile  districts  about  Albemarle  Sound.  Nearly 
everywhere  in  the  lowlands,  however,  the  land  was  too  barren 
for  any  distinct  prosperity.  The  settlements  were  quite  isolated, 
the  communications  very  poor,  and  the  social  tone  mostly  that 
of  the  backwoods  frontier.  An  Anglican  missionary  when  de- 
scribing his  own  plight  there  in  171 1  discussed  the  industrial 
regime  about  him :  "Men  are  generally  of  all  trades  and  women 
the  like  within  their  spheres,  except  some  who  are  the  posterity 
of  old  planters  and  have  great  numbers  of  slaves  who  under- 
stand most  handicraft.  Men  are  generally  carpenters,  joiners, 
wheelwrights,  coopers,  butchers,  tanners,  shoemakers,  tallow- 
chandlers,  watermen  and  what  not ;  women,  soap-makers,  starch- 
makers,  dyers,  etc.  He  or  she  that  cannot  do  all  these  things,  or 
hath  not  slaves  that  can,  over  and  above  all  the  common  occu- 
pations of  both  sexes,  will  have  but  a  bad  time  of  it;  for  help 
is  not  to  be  had  at  any  rate,  every  one  having  business  enough 
of  his  own.  This  makes  tradesmen  turn  planters,  and  these 
become  tradesmen.  No  society  one  with  another,  but  all  study 
to  live  by  their  own  hands,  of  their  own  produce;  and  what 
they  can  spare  goes  for  foreign  goods.  Nay,  many  live  on  a 
slender  diet  to  buy  rum,  sugar  and  molasses,  with  other  such 
like  necessaries,  which  are  sold  at  such  a  rate  that  the  planter 
here  is  but  a  slave  to  raise  a  provision  for  other  colonies,  and 
dare  not  allow  himself  to  partake  of  his  own  creatures,  except  it 
be  the  corn  of  the  country  in  hominy  bread."  ^^  Some  of  the 
farmers  and  probably  all  the  planters  raised  tobacco  according 

"Letter  of  Rev.  John  Urmstone,  July  7,  1711,  to  the  secretary  of  the 
Society  for  Propagating  the  Gospel,  printed  in  F.  L.  Hawks,  History  of 
North  Carolina  (Fayetteville,  N.  C,  1857,  1858),  II,  215,  216. 


82  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY  ^ 

to  the  methods  prevalent  in  Virginia.  Some  also  made  tar  for 
sale  from  the  abounding  pine  timber ;  but  with  most  of  the  fam- 
ilies intercourse  with  markets  must  have  been  at  an  irreducible 
minimum. 

Tobacco  culture,  while  requiring  severe  exertion  only  at  a  few 
crises,  involved  a  long  painstaking  routine  because  of  the  delicacy 
of  the  plant  and  the  difficulty  of  producing  leaf  of  good  quality, 
whether  of  the  original  varieties,  oronoko  and  sweet-scented,  or 
of  the  many  others  later  developed.  The  seed  must  be  sown 
in  late  winter  or  early  spring  in  a  special  bed  of  deep  forest 
mold  dressed  with  wood  ashes ;  and  the  fields  must  be  broken 
and  laid  off  by  shallow  furrows  into  hills  three  or  four  feet 
apart  by  the  time  the  seedlings  were  grown  to  a  finger's  length. 
Then  came  the  first  crisis.  During  or  just  after  an  April,  May 
or  June  rain  the  young  plants  must  be  drawn  carefully  from 
their  beds,  distributed  in  the  fields,  and  each  plant  set  in  its 
hill.  Able-bodied,  expert  hands  could  set  them  at  the  rate  of 
thousands  a  day ;  and  every  nerve  must  be  strained  for  the  task's 
completion  before  the  ground  became  dry  enough  to  endanger 
the  seedlings'  lives.  Then  began  a  steady  repetition  of  hoeings 
and  plowings,  broken  by  the  rush  after  a  rain  to  replant  the 
hills  whose  first  plants  had  died  or  grown  twisted.  Then  came 
also  several  operations  of  special  tedium.  Each  plant  at  the 
time  of  forming  its  flower  bud  must  be  topped  at  a  height  to 
leave  a  specified  number  of  leaves  growing  on  the  stalk,  and  each 
stalk  must  have  the  suckers  growing  at  the  base  of  the  leaf-stems 
pulled  off;  and  the  under  side  of  every  leaf  must  be  examined 
twice  at  least  for  the  destruction  of  the  horn-worms.  These 
came  each  year  in  two  successive  armies  or  "gluts,"  the  one 
when  the  plants  were  half  grown,  the  other  when  they  were  nearly 
ready  for  harvest.  When  the  crop  began  to  turn  yellow  the 
stalks  must  be  cut  off  close  to  the  ground,  and  after  wilting  car- 
ried to  a  well  ventilated  tobacco  house  and  there  hung  speedily 
for  curing.  Each  stalk  must  hang  at  a  proper  distance  from 
its  neighbor,  attached  to  laths  laid  in  tiers  on  the  joists.  There 
the  crop  must  stay  for  some  months,  with  the  windows  open  in 
dry  weather  and  closed  in  wet.    Finally  came  the  striking,  sort- 


THE  TOBACCO  COLONIES  83 

ing  and  prizing  in  weather  moist  enough  to  make  the  leaves 
pliable.  Part  of  the  gang  would  lower  the  stalks  to  the  floor, 
where  the  rest  working  in  trios  would  strip  them,  the  first  stripper 
taking  the  culls,  the  second  the  bright  leaves,  the  third  the  re- 
maining ones  of  dull  color.  Each  would  bind  his  takings  into 
"hands"  of  about  a  quarter  of  a  pound  each  and  throw  them  into 
assorted  piles.  In  the  packing  or  "prizing"  a  barefoot  man  inside 
the  hogshead  would  lay  the  bundles  in  courses,  tramping  them 
cautiously  but  heavily.  Then  a  second  hogshead,  without  a 
bottom,  would  be  set  atop  the  first  and  likewise  filled,  and  then 
perhaps  a  third,  when  the  whole  stack  would  be  put  under  blocks 
and  levers  compressing  the  contents  into  the  one  hogshead  at 
the  bottom,  which  when  headed  up  was  ready  for  market.  Often- 
times a  crop  was  not  cured  enough  for  prizing  until  the  next  crop 
had  been  planted.  Meanwhile  the  spare  time  of  the  gang  was 
employed  in  clearing  new  fields,  tending  the  subsidiary  crops, 
mending  fences,  and  performing  many  other  incidental  tasks. 
With  some  exaggeration  an  essayist  wrote,  "The  whole  circle 
of  the  year  is  one  scene  of  bustle  and  toil,  in  which  tobacco  claims 
a  constant  and  chief  share."  ^^ 

The  general  scale  of  slaveholdings  in  the  tobacco  districts  can- 
not be  determined  prior  to  the  close  of  the  American  Revolution ; 
but  the  statistics  then  available  may  be  taken  as  fairly  represen- 
tative for  the  eighteenth  century  at  large.  A  state  census  taken 
in  certain  Virginia  counties  in  1782- 1783  ^^  permits  the  following 
analysis  for  eight  of  them  selected  for  their  large  proportions 
of  slaves.  These  counties,  Amelia,  Hanover,  Lancaster,  Middle- 
sex, New  Kent,  Richmond,  Surry  and  Warwick,  are  scattered 
through  the  Tidewater  and  the  lower  Piedmont.  For  each  one 
of  their  citizens,  fifteen  altogether,  who  held  upwards  of  one 
hundred  slaves,  there  were  approximately  three  who  had  from  50 

**  C.  W.  Gooch,  "Prize  Essay  on  Agriculture  in  Virginia,"  in  the  Lynch- 
burg Virginian,  July  14,  1833.  More  detailed  is  W.  W.  Bowie,  "Prize  Es- 
say on  the  Cultivation  and  Management  of  Tobacco,"  in  the  U.  S.  Patent 
Office  Report,  1849-1850,  pp.  318-324.  E.  R.  Billings,  Tobacco  (Hartford, 
1875)  is  a  good  general  treatise. 

**  Printed  in  lieu  of  the  missing  returns  of  the  first  U.  S.  census,  in 
Heads  of  Families  at  the  First  Census  of  the  United  States:  Virginia 
(Washington,  1908). 


84  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

to  99;  seven  with  from  30  to  49;  thirteen  with  from  20  to  29; 
forty  with  from  10  to  19;  forty  with  from  5  to  9;  seventy  with 
from  I  to  4;  and  sixty  who  had  none.  In  the  three  chief  planta- 
tion counties  of  Maryland,  viz.  Ann  Arundel,  Charles,  and  Prince 
George,  the  ratios  among  the  slaveholdings  of  the  several  scales, 
according  to  the  United  States  census  of  1790,  were  almost  iden- 
tical with  those  just  noted  in  the  selected  Virginia  counties,  but 
the  non-slaveholders  were  nearly  twice  as  numerous  in.  pro- 
portion. In  all  these  Virginia  and  Maryland  counties  the  average 
holding  ranged  between  8.5  and  13  slaves.  In  the  other  districts 
in  both  commonwealths,  where  the  plantation  system  was  not  so 
dominant,  the  average  slaveholding  was  smaller,  of  course,  and 
the  non-slaveholders  more  abounding. 

The  largest  slaveholding  in  Maryland  returned  in  the  census 
of  1790  was  that  of  Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton,  comprising 
316  slaves.  Among  the  largest  reported  in  Virginia  in  1782-1783 
were  those  of  John  Tabb,  Amelia  County,  257;  William  Allen, 
Sussex  County,  241 ;  George  Chewning,  224,  and  Thomas  Nel- 
son, 208,  in  Hanover  County ;  Wilson  N.  Gary,  Fluvanna  County, 
200;  and  George  Washington,  Fairfax  County,  188.  Since  the 
great  planters  occasionally  owned  several  scattered  plantations 
it  may  be  that  the  censuses  reported  some  of  the  slaves  under 
the  names  of  the  overseers  rather  than  under  those  of  the  owners ; 
but  that  such  instances  were  probably  few  is  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  the  holdings  of  Chewning  and  Nelson  above  noted  were 
each  listed  by  the  census  takers  in  several  parcels,  with  the  names 
of  owners  and  overseers  both  given. 

The  great  properties  were  usually  divided,  even  where  the  lands 
lay  in  single  tracts,  into  several  plantations  for  more  convenient 
operation,  each  under  a  separate  overseer  or  in  some  cases  under 
a  slave  foreman.  If  the  working  squads  of  even  the  major  pro- 
prietors were  of  but  moderate  scale,  those  in  the  multitude  of 
minor  holdings  were  of  course  lesser  still.  On  the  whole,  indeed, 
slave  industry  was  organized  in  smallc-  units  by  far  than  most 
writers,  whether  of  romance  or  history,  would  have  us  believe. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  RICE   COAST 

THE  impulse  for  the  formal  colonization  of  Carolina  came 
from  Barbados,  which  by  the  time  of  the  Restoration  was 
both  overcrowded  and  torn  with  dissension.  Sir  John 
Colleton,  one  of  the  leading  planters  in  that  little  island,  proposed 
to  several  of  his  powerful  Cavalier  friends  in  England  that 
they  join  him  in  applying  for  a  proprietary  charter  to  the  vacant 
region  between  Virginia  and  Florida,  with  a  view  of  attracting 
Barbadians  and  any  others  who  might  come.  In  1663  accord- 
ingly the  "Merry  Monarch"  issued  the  desired  charter  to  the 
eight  applicants  as  Lords  Proprietors.  They  were  the  Duke  of 
Albemarle,  the  Earl  of  Clarendon,  Earl  Craven,  Lord  Ashley 
(afterward  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury),  Lord  Berkeley,  Sir  George 
Carteret,  Sir  William  Berkeley,  and  Sir  John  Colleton.  Most 
of  these  had  no  acquaintance  with  America,  and  none  of  them 
had  knowledge  of  Carolina  or  purpose  of  going  thither.  They 
expected  that  the  mere  throwing  open  of  the  region  under  their 
distinguished  patronage  would  bring  settlers  in  a  rush ;  and  to 
this  end  they  published  proposals  in  England  and  Barbados 
offering  lands  on  liberal  terms  and  providing  for  a  large  degree 
of  popular  self-government.  A  group  of  Barbadians  promptly 
made  a  tentative  settlement  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cape  Fear  River; 
but  finding  the  soil  exceedingly  barren,  they  almost  as  promptly 
scattered  to  the  four  winds.  Meanwhile  in  the  more  southerly 
region  nothing  was  done  beyond  exploring  the  shore. 

Finding  their  passive  policy  of  no  avail,  the  Lords  Proprietors 
bestirred  themselves  in  1669  to  the  extent  of  contributing  several 
hundred  pounds  each  toward  planting  a  colony  on  their  south- 
ward coast.  At  the  same  time  they  adopted  the  "fundamental 
constitutions"  which  John  Locke  had  framed  for  the  province. 
These  contemplated  land  grants  in  huge  parcels  to  a  provincial 

85 


86  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

nobility,  and  a  cumbrous  oligarchical  government  with  a  minimum 
participation  of  popular  representatives.  The  grandiloquent  feu- 
dalism of  the  scheme  appealed  so  strongly  to  the  aristocratic 
Lords  Proprietors  that  in  spite  of  their  usual  acumen  in  politics 
they  were  blinded  to  its  conflicts  with  their  charter  and  to  its  utter 
top-heaviness.  They  rewarded  Locke  with  the  first  patent 
of  Carolina  nobility,  which  carried  with  it  a  grant  of  forty-eight 
thousand  acres.  For  forty  years  they  clung  to  the  fundamental 
constitutions,  notwithstanding  repeated  rejections  of  them  by  the 
colonists. 

The  fund  of  1669  was  used  in  planting  what  proved  a  per- 
manent settlement  of  English  and  Barbadians  on  the  shores  of 
Charleston  Harbor.  Thereafter  the  Lords  Proprietors  relapsed 
into  passiveness,  commissioning  a  new  governor  now  and  then 
and  occasionally  scolding  the  colonists  for  disobedience.  The 
progress  of  settlement  was  allowed  to  take  what  course  it  might. 

The  fundamental  constitutions  recognized  the  institution  of 
negro  slavery,  and  some  of  the  first  Barbadians  may  have  car- 
ried slaves  with  them  to  Carolina.  But  in  the  early  decades 
Indian  trading,  lumbering  and  miscellaneous  farming  were  the 
only  means  of  livelihood,  none  of  which  gave  distinct  occasion 
for  employing  negroes.  The  inhabitants,  furthermore,  had  no 
surplus  income  with  which  to  buy  slaves.  The  recruits  who  con- 
tinued to  come  from  the  West  Indies  doubtless  brought  some 
blacks  for  their  service;  but  the  Huguenot  exiles  from  France, 
who  comprised  the  chief  other  streamlet  of  immigration,  had 
no  slaves  and  little  money.  Most  of  the  people  were  earning 
their  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their  brows.  The  Huguenots  in  par- 
ticular, settling  mainly  in  the  interior  on  the  Cooper  and  Santee 
Rivers,  labored  with  extraordinary  diligence  and  overcame  the 
severest  handicaps.  That  many  of  the  settlers  whether  from 
France  or  the  West  Indies  were  of  talented  and  sturdy  stock  is 
witnessed  by  the  mention  of  the  family  names  of  Legare, 
Laurens,  Marion  and  Ravenel  among  the  Huguenots,  Drayton, 
Elliot,  Gibbes  and  Middleton  among  the  Barbadians,  Lowndes 
and  Rawlins  from  St.  Christopher's,  and  Pinckney  from  Jamaica. 
Some  of  the  people  were  sluggards,  of  course,  but  the  rest,  hetero- 


THE  RICE  COAST  87 

geneous  as  they  were,  were  living  and  laboring  as  best  they  might, 
trying  such  new  projects  as  they  could,  building  a  free  government 
in  spite  of  the  Lords  Proprietors,  and  awaiting  the  discovery  Ov^ 
some  staple  resource  from  which  prosperity  might  be  won. 

Among  the  crops  tried  was  rice,  introduced  from  Madagascar 
by  Landgrave  Thomas  Smith  about  1694,  which  after  some  pre- 
liminary failures  proved  so  great  a  success  that  from  about  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  its  production  became  the  ab- 
sorbing concern.  Now  slaves  began  to  be  imported  rapidly.  An 
official  account  of  the  colony  in  1708^  reckoned  the  population 
at  about  3500  whites,  of  whom  120  were  indentured  servants, 
4100  negro  slaves,  and  1403  Indians  captured  in  recent  wars  and 
held  for  the  time  being  in  a  sort  of  slavery.  '  Within  the  preceding 
five  years,  while  the  whites  had  been  diminished  by  an  epidemic, 
the  negroes  had  increased  by  about  1,100.  The  negroes  were 
governed  under  laws  modeled  quite  closely  upon  the  slave  code 
of  Barbados,  with  the  striking  exception  that  in  this  period  of 
danger  from  Spanish  invasion  most  of  the  slave  men  were  re- 
quired by  law  to  be  trained  in  the  use  of  arms  and  listed  as  an 
auxiliary  militia. 

During  the  rest  of  the  colonial  period  the  production  of  rice 
advanced  at  an  accelerating  rate  and  the  slave  population  in- 
creased in  proportion,  while  the  whites  multiplied  somewhat  more 
slowly.  Thus  in  1724  the  whites  were  estimated  at  14,000,  the 
slaves  at  32,000,  and  the  rice  export  was  about  4000  tons ;  in 
1749  the  whites  were  said  to  be  nearly  25,000,  the  slaves  at  least 
39,000,  and  the  rice  export  some  14,000  tons,  valued  at  nearly 
iioo,ooo  sterling;-  and  in  1765  the  whites  were  about  40,000, 
the  slaves  about  90,000,  and  the  rice  export  about  32,000  tons, 
worth  some  £225,000.^  Meanwhile  the  rule  of  the  Lords  Pro- 
prietors had  been  replaced  for  the  better  by  that  of  the  crown, 
with   South   Carolina  politically  separated   from  her  northern 

*Text  printed  in  Edward  McCrady,  South  Carolina  under  the  Pro- 
prietary Government  (New  York,  1897),  pp.  477-481. 

'  Governor  Glen,  in  B.  R.  Carroll,  Historical  Collections  of  South  Caro- 
lina (New  York,  1836),  II,  218,  234,  266. 

*  McCrady,  South  Carolina  under  the  Royal  Government  (New  York, 
1899),  PP-  389,  390,  807. 


88    .  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

sister ;  and  indigo  had  been  introduced  as  a  supplementary  staple. 
The  Charleston  district  was  for  several  decades  perhaps  the  most 
prosperous  area  on  the  continent. 

While  rice  culture  did  not  positively  require  inundation,  it  was 
facilitated  by  the  periodical  flooding  of  the  fields,  a  practice 
which  was  introduced  into  the  colony  about  1724.  The  best  lands 
for  this  purpose  were  level  bottoms  with  a  readily  controllable 
water  supply  adjacent.  During  most  of  the  colonial  period- the 
main  recourse  was  to  the  inland  swamps,  which  could  be  flooded 
only  from  reservoirs  of  impounded  rain  or  brooks.  The  fre- 
quent shortage  of  water  in  this  regime  made  the  flooding  irreg- 
ular and  necessitated  many  hoeings  of  the  crop.  Furthermore, 
the  dearth  of  watersheds  within  reach  of  the  great  cypress 
swamps  on  the  river  borders  hampered  the  use  of  these  which 
were  the  most  fertile  lands  in  the  colony.  Beginning  about  1783 
there  was  accordingly  a  general  replacement  of  the  reservoir  sys- 
tem by  the  new  one  of  tide-flowing.*  For  this  method  tracts  were 
chosen  on  the  flood-plains  of  streams  whose  water  was  fresh  but 
whose  height  was  controlled  by  the  tide.  The  land  lying  between 
the  levels  of  high  and  low  tide  was  cleared,  banked  along  the 
river  front  and  on  the  sides,  elaborately  ditched  for  drainage,  and 
equipped  with  "trunks"  or  sluices  piercing  the  front  embank- 
ment. On  a  frame  above  either  end  of  each  trunk  a  door  was 
hung  on  a  horizontal  pivot  and  provided  with  a  ratchet.  When 
the  outer  door  was  raised  above  the  mouth  of  the  trunk  and  the 
inner  door  was  lowered,  the  water  in  the  stream  at  high  tide 
would  sluice  through  and  flood  the  field,  whereas  at  low  tide  the 
water  pressure  from  the  land  side  would  shut  the  door  and  keep 
the  flood  in.  But  when  the  elevation  of  the  doors  was  reversed 
the  tide  would  be  kept  out  and  at  low  tide  any  water  collected  in 
the  ditches  from  rain  or  seepage  was  automatically  drained  into 
the  river.  Occasional  cross  embankments  divided  the  fields  for 
greater  convenience  of  control.  The  tide-flow  system  had  its  own 
limitations  and  handicaps.  Many  of  the  available  tracts  were  so 
narrow  that  the  cost  of  embankment  was  very  high  in  proportion 

*  David  Ramsay,  History  of  South  Carolina  (Charleston,  1809),  II,  201- 
206. 


THE  RICE  COAST  89 

to  the  area  secured ;  and  hurricanes  from  oceanward  sometimes 
raised  the  streams  until  they  over-topped  the  banks  and  broke 
them.  If  these  invading  waters  v^ere  briny  the  standing  crop 
would  be  killed  and  the  soil  perhaps  made  useless  for  several 
years  until  fresh  water  had  leached  out  the  salt.  At  many  places, 
in  fact,  the  water  for  the  routine  flowing  of  the  crop  had  to  be 
inspected  and  the  time  awaited  when  the  stream  was  not  brackish. 

Economy  of  operation  required  cultivation  in  fairly  large  units. 
Governor  Glen  wrote  about  1760,  "They  reckon  thirty  slaves  a 
proper  number  for  a  rice  plantation,  and  to  be  tended  by  one 
overseer,"  °  Upon  the  resort  to  tide-flowing  the  scale  began  to 
increase.  For  example,  Sir  James  Wright,  governor  of  Georgia, 
had  in  1771  eleven  plantations  on  the  Savannah,  Ogeechee  and 
Canoochee  Rivers,  employing  from  33  to  J2  slaves  each,  the  great 
majority  of  whom  were  working  hands.^  At  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  single  plantation  of  Governor  Aiken  on 
Jehossee  Island,  South  Carolina,  of  which  more  will  be  said  in 
another  chapter,  had  some  seven  hundred  slaves  of  all  ages. 

In  spite  of  many  variations  in  the  details  of  cultivation,  the 
tide-flow  system  led  to  a  fairly  general  standard  of  routme. 
After  perhaps  a  preliminary  breaking  of  the  soil  in  the  preceding 
fall,  operations  began  in  the  early  spring  with  smoothing  the 
fields  and  trenching  them  with  narrow  hoes  into  shallow  drills 
about  three  inches  wide  at  the  bottom  and  twelve  or  fourteen 
inches  apart.  In  these  between  March  and  May  the  seed  rice  was 
carefully  strewn  and  the  water  at  once  let  on  for  the  "sprout 
flow  "  About  a  w^eek  later  the  land  was  drained  and  kept  so  until 
the  plants  appeared  plentifully  above  ground.  Then  a  week  of 
"point  flow"  was  followed  by  a  fortnight  of  dry  culture  in  which 
the  spaces  between  the  rows  were  lightly  hoed  and  the  weeds 
amidst  the  rice  pulled  up.  Then  came  the  "long  flow"  for  two 
or  three  weeks,  followed  by  more  vigorous  hoeing,  and  finally 
the  "lay-by  flow"  extending  for  two  or  three  months  until  the 
crop,  then  standing  shoulder  high  and  thick  with  bending  heads, 
was  ready  for  harvest.     The  flowings  served  a  triple  purpose 

*  Carroll,  Historical  Collections  of  South  Carolina,  II,  202. 
•American  Historical  Association  Report  for  1903,  p.  445. 


90  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SEAVERY 

in  checking  the  weeds  and  grass,  stimulating  the  rice,  and  saving 
the  delicate  stalks  from  breakage  and  matting  by  storms. 

A  curious  item  in  the  routine  just  before  the  grain  was  ripe 
was  the  guarding  of  the  crop  from  destruction  by  rice  birds. 
These  bobolinks  timed  their  southward  migration  so  as  to  descend 
upon  the  fields  in  myriads  when  the  grain  was  "in  the  milk." 
At  that  stage  the  birds,  clinging  to  the  stalks,  could  squeeze  the 
substance  from  within  each  husk  by  pressure  of  the  beak.  Ne- 
groes armed  with  guns  were  stationed  about  the  fields  with  in- 
structions to  fire  whenever  a  drove  of  the  birds  alighted  nearby. 
This  fusillade  checked  but  could  not  wholly  prevent  the  bobolink 
ravages.  To  keep  the  gunners  from  shattering  the  crop  itself 
they  were  generally  given  charges  of  powder  only;  but  sufficient 
shot  was  issued  to  enable  the  guards  to  kill  enough  birds  for  the 
daily  consumption  of  the  plantation.  When  dressed  and  broiled 
they  were  such  fat  and  toothsome  morsels  that  in  their  season 
other  sorts  of  meat  were  little  used. 

For  the  rice  harvest,  beginning  early  in  September,  as  soon  as 
a  field  was  drained  the  negroes  would  be  turned  in  with  sickles, 
each  laborer  cutting  a  swath  of  three  or  four  rows,  leaving  the 
stubble  about  a  foot  high  to  sustain  the  cut  stalks  carefully  laid 
upon  it  in  handfuls  for  a  day's  drying.  Next  day  the  crop  would 
be  bound  in  sheaves  and  stacked  for  a  brief  curing.  When  the 
reaping  was  done  the  threshing  began,  and  then  followed  the  te- 
dious labor  of  separating  the  grain  from  its  tightly  adhering 
husk.  In  colonial  times  the  work  was  mostly  done  by  hand,  first 
the  flail  for  threshing,  then  the  heavy  fat-pine  pestle  and  mortar 
for  breaking  off  the  husk.  Finally  the  rice  was  winnowed  of  its 
chaff,  screened  of  the  "rice  flour"  and  broken  grain,  and  bar- 
reled for  market.' 

The  ditches  and  pools  in  and  about  the  fields  of  course  bred 
swarms  of  mosquitoes  which  carried  malaria  to  all  people  subject. 
Most  of  the  whites  were  afflicted  by  that  disease  in  the  warmer 

^The  best  descriptions  of  the  rice  industry  are  Edmund  Ruffin,  Agri- 
cultural Surrey  of  South  Carolina  (Columbia,  S.  C,  1843)  ;  and  R.  F.  W. 
Allston,  Essay  on  Sea  Coast  Crops  (Charleston,  1854),  which  latter  is 
printed  also  in  DeBow's  Remew,  XVI,  589-615. 


THE  RICE  COAST  91 

half  of  the  year,  but  the  Africans  were  generally  immune.  Ne- 
gro labor  was  therefore  at  such  a  premium  that  whites  were  vir- 
tually never  employed  on  the  plantations  except  as  overseers  and 
occasionally  as  artisans.  In  colonial  times  the  planters,  except 
the  few  quite  wealthy  ones  who  had  town  houses  in  Charleston, 
lived  on  their  places  the  year  round ;  but  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century  they  began  to  resort  in  summer  to  "pine  land" 
villages  within  an  hour  or  two's  riding  distance  from  their  plan- 
tations. In  any  case  the  intercourse  between  the  whites  and 
blacks  was  notably  less  than  in  the  tobacco  region,  and  the  prog- 
ress of  the  negroes  in  civilization  correspondingly  slighter.  The 
plantations  were  less  of  homesteads  and  more  of  business  estab- 
lishments; the  race  relations,  while  often  cordial,  were  seldom 
intimate. 

The  introduction  of  indigo  culture  was  achieved  by  one  of 
America's  greatest  women,  Eliza  Lucas,  afterward  the  wife  of 
Charles  Pinckney  (chief-justice  of  the  province)  and  mother  of 
the  two  patriot  statesmen  Thomas  and  Charles  Cotesworth 
Pinckney.  Her  father,  the  governor  of  the  British  island  of  An- 
tigua, had  been  prompted  by  his  wife's  ill  health  to  settle  his  fam- 
ily in  South  Carolina,  where  the  three  plantations  he  acquired 
near  Charleston  were  for  several  years  under  his  daughter's  man- 
agement. This  girl  while  attending  her  father's  business  found 
time  to  keep  up  her  music  and  her  social  activities,  to  teach  a 
class  of  young  negroes  to  read,  and  to  carry  on  various  undertak- 
ings in  economic  botany.  In  1741  her  experiments  with  cotton, 
guinea-corn  and  ginger  were  defeated  by  frost,  and  alfalfa  proved 
unsuited  to  her  soil ;  but  in  spite  of  two  preliminary  failures  that 
year  she  raised  some  indigo  plants  with  success.  Next  year  her 
father  sent  a  West  Indian  expert  named  Cromwell  to  manage 
her  indigo  crop  and  prepare  its  commercial  product.  But  Crom- 
well, in  fear  of  injuring  the  prosperity  of  his  own  community, 
purposely  mishandled  the  manufacturing.  With  the  aid  of  a 
neighbor,  nevertheless,  Eliza  not  only  detected  Cromwell's  treach- 
ery but  in  the  next  year  worked  out  the  true  process.  She  and 
her  father  now  distributed  indigo  seed  to  a  number  of  planters; 


92  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  from  1744  the  crop  began  to  reach  the  rank  of  a  staple.^  The 
arrival  of  CaroHna  indigo  at  London  was  welcomed  so  warmly 
that  in  1748  Parliament  established  a  bounty  of  sixpence  a 
pound  on  indigo  produced  in  the  British  dominions.  The  Caro- 
lina output  remained  of  mediocre  quality  until  in  1756  Moses 
Lindo,  after  a  career  in  the  indigo  trade  in  London,  emigrated  to 
Charleston  and  began  to  teach  the  planters  to  distinguish  the 
grades  and  manufacture  the  best.^  At  excellent  prices,  ranging 
generally  from  four  to  six  shillings  a  pound,  the  indigo  crop  dur- 
ing the  rest  of  the  colonial  period,  reaching  a  maximum  output 
of  somewhat  more  than  a  million  pounds  from  some  twenty 
thousand  acres  in  the  crop,  yielded  the  community  about  half  as 
much  gross  income  as  did  its  rice.  The  net  earnings  of  the  plant- 
ers were  increased  in  a  still  greater  proportion  than  this,  for  the 
work-seasons  in  the  two  crops  could  be  so  dovetailed  that  a  sin- 
gle gang  might  cultivate  both  staples. 

Indigo  grew  best  in  the  light,  dry  soil  so  common  on  the  coastal 
plain.  From  seed  sown  in  the  early  spring  the  plant  would  reach 
its  full  growth,  from  three  to  six  feet  high,  and  begin  to  bloom 
in  June  or  early  July.  At  that  stage  the  plants  were  cut  off  near 
the  ground  and  laid  under  water  in  a  shallow  vat  for  a  fermenta- 
tion which  in  the  course  of  some  twelve  hours  took  the  dye-stuff 
out  of  the  leaves.  The  solution  then  drawn  into  another  vat  was 
vigorously  beaten  with  paddles  for  several  hours  to  renew  and 
complete  the  foaming  fermentation.  Samples  were  taken  at  fre- 
quent intervals  during  the  latter  part  of  this  process,  and  so  soon 
as  a  blue  tinge  became  apparent  lime  water,  in  carefully  deter- 
mined proportions,  was  gently  stirred  in  to  stop  all  further  action 
and  precipitate  the  "blueing."  When  this  had  settled,  the  water 
was  drawn  off,  the  paste  on  the  floor  v/as  collected,  drained  in 
bags,  kneaded,  pressed,  cut  into  cubes,  dried  in  the  shade  and 
packed  for  market.^"  A  second  crop  usually  sprang  from  the 
roots  of  the  first  and  was  harvested  in  August  or  September. 

'Journal  and  Letters  of  Eliza  Lucas  (Wormesloe,  Ga.,  1850)  ;  Mrs.  St. 
Julien  Ravenel,  Elisa  Pinckney  (New  York,  1896)  ;  Plantation  and  Fron- 
tier, I,  265,  266. 

*B.  A.  Elzas,  The  Jews  of  South  Carolina  (Philadelphia,  1905),  chap.  3. 

"  B.  R.  Carroll,  Historical  Collections  of  South  Carolina,  II,  532-535- 


THE  RICE  COAST  93 

Indigo  production  was  troublesome  and  uncertain  of  results. 
Not  only  did  the  furrows  have  to  be  carefully  weeded  and  the 
caterpillars  kept  off  the  plants,  but  when  the  stalks  were  being  cut 
and  carried  to  the  vats  great  pains  were  necessary  to  keep  the 
bluish  bloom  on  the  leaves  from  being  rubbed  off  and  lost,  and 
the  fermentation  required  precise  control  for  the  sake  of  quality 
in  the  product.^^  The  production  of  the  blue  staple  virtually 
ended  with  the  colonial  period.  The  War  of  Independence  not 
only  cut  off  the  market  for  the  time  being  but  ended  perma- 
nently, of  course,  the  receipt  of  the  British  bounty.  When  peace 
returned  the  culture  was  revived  in  a  struggling  way;  but  its 
vexations  and  vicissitudes  made  it  promptly  give  place  to  sea- 
island  cotton.^^ 

The  plantation  of  the  rice-coast  type  had  clearly  shown  its 
tendency  to  spread  into  all  the  suitable  areas  from  Winyah  Bay 
to  St.  John's  River,  when  its  southward  progress  was  halted  for 
a  time  by  the  erection  of  the  peculiar  province  of  Georgia.  The 
launching  of  this  colony  was  the  beginning  of  modern  philan- 
thropy. Upon  procuring  a  charter  in  1732  constituting  them 
trustees  of  Georgia,  James  Oglethorpe  and  his  colleagues  began 
to  raise  funds  from  private  donations  and  parliamentary  grants 
for  use  in  colonizing  English  debtor-prisoners  and  other  unfor- 
tunates. The  beneficiaries,  chosen  because  of  their  indigence, 
were  transported  at  the  expense  of  the  trust  and  given  fifty-acre 
homesteads  with  equipment  and  supplies.  Instruction  in  agri- 
culture was  provided  for  them  at  Savannah,  and  various  regu- 
lations were  established  for  making  them  soberly  industrious  on 
a  small-farming  basis.  The  land  could  not  be  alienated,  and 
neither  slaves  nor  rum  could  be  imported.  Persons  immigrat- 
ing at  their  own  expense  might  procure  larger  land  grants,  but 
no  one  could  own  more  than  five  hundred  acres ;  and  all  settlers 
must  plant  specified  numbers  of  grape  vines  and  mulberry  trees 
with  a  view  to  establishing  wine  and  silk  as  the  staples  of  the 
colony. 

"  Johann  David  Schoepf ,  Travels  in  the  Confederation,  1783-1784,  A.  J. 
Morrison  tr.  (Philadelphia,  1911),  pp.  187-189. 

"David  Ramsay,  History  of  South  Carolina,  II,  212;  D.  D.  Wallac<4 
Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  p.  132. 


94  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

In  the  first  few  years,  while  Oglethorpe  was  in  personal 
charge  at  Savannah  and  supplies  from  England  were  abundant, 
there  was  an  appearance  of  success,  which  soon  proved  illusory. 
Not  only  were  the  conditions  unfit  for  silk  and  wine,  but  the  fer- 
tile tracts  were  malarial  and  the  healthy  districts  barren,  and 
every  industry  suited  to  the  climate  had  to  meet  the  competition 
of  the  South  Carolinians  with  their  slave  labor  and  plantation 
system.  The  ne'er-do-weels  from  England  proved  ne'er-do- 
weels  again.  They  complained  of  the  soil,  the  climate,  and  the 
paternalistic  regulations  under  which  they  lived.  They  pro- 
tested against  the  requirements  of  silk  and  wine  culture;  they 
begged  for  the  removal  of  all  peculiar  restrictions  and  for  the 
institution  of  self-government.  They  bombarded  the  trustees 
with  petitions  saying  "rum  punch  is  very  wholesome  in  this  cli- 
mate," asking  fee-simple  title  to  their  lands,  and  demanding  most 
vigorously  the  right  of  importing  slaves.  But  the  trustees  were 
deaf  to  complaints.  They  maintained  that  the  one  thing  lack- 
ing for  prosperity  from  silk  and  wine  was  perseverance,  that  the 
restriction  on  land  tenure  was  necessary  on  the  one  hand  to  keep 
an  arms-bearing  population  in  the  colony  and  on  the  other  hand 
to  prevent  the  settlers  from  contracting  debts  by  mortgage,  that 
the  prohibitions  of  rum  and  slaves  were  essential  safeguards  of 
sobriety  and  industry,  and  that  discontent  under  the  benevolent 
care  of  the  trustees  evidenced  a  perversity  on  the  part  of  the 
complainants  which  would  disqualify  them  for  self-government. 
Affairs  thus  reached  an  impasse.  Contributions  stopped ;  Par- 
liament gave  merely  enough  money  for  routine  expenses;  the 
trustees  lost  their  zeal  but  not  their  crotchets;  the  colony  went 
from  bad  to  worse.  Out  of  perhaps  five  thousand  souls  in  Geo- 
gia  about  1737  so  many  departed  to  South  Carolina  and  other 
free  settlements  that  in  1741  there  were  barely  more  than  five 
hundred  left.  This  extreme  depression  at  length  forced  even 
the  staunchest  of  the  trustees  to  relax.  First  the  exclusion  of  rum 
was  repealed,  then  the  introduction  of  slaves  on  lease  was  winked 
at,  then  in  1749  and  1750  the  overt  importation  of  slaves  was  au- 
thorized and  all  restrictions  on  land  tenure  were  canceled. 
Finally  the  stoppage  of  the  parliamentarv  subvention  in   1751 


THE  RICE  COAST  95 

forced  the  trustees  in  the  following  year  to  resign  their  charter. 

Slaveholders  had  already  crossed  the  Savannah  River  in  ap- 
preciable numbers  to  erect  plantations  on  favorable  tracts.  The 
lapse  of  a  few  more  transition  years  brought  Georgia  to  the 
status  on  the  one  hand  of  a  self-governing  royal  province  and  on 
the  other  of  a  plantation  community  prospering,  modestly  for  the 
time  being,  in  the  production  of  rice  and  indigo.  Her  peculiari- 
ties under  the  trustee  regime  were  gone  but  not  forgotten.  The 
rigidity  of  paternalism,  well  meant  though  it  had  been,  was  a  les- 
son against  future  submission  to  outward  control  in  any  form; 
and  their  failure  as  a  peasantry  in  competition  with  planters 
across  the  river  persuaded  the  Georgians  and  their  neighbors  that 
slave  labor  was  essential  for  prosperity. 

It  is  curious,  by  the  way,  that  the  tender-hearted,  philanthropic 
Oglethorpe  at  the  very  time  of  his  founding  Georgia  was  the 
manager  of  the  great  slave-trading  corporation,  the  Royal  Af- 
rican Company.  The  conflict  of  the  two  functions  cannot  be  re- 
lieved except  by  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  reconciling  considera- 
tions, the  spirit  of  the  time.  Whatever  else  the  radicals  of  that 
period  might  wish  to  reform  or  abolish,  the  slave  trade  was  held 
either  as  a  matter  of  course  or  as  a  positive  benefit  to  the  people 
who  constituted  its  merchandise. 

The  narrow  limits  of  the  rice  and  indigo  regime  in  the  two 
colonies  made  the  plantation  system  the  more  dominant  in  its  own 
area.  Detailed  statistics  are  lacking  until  the  first  federal  cen- 
sus, when  indigo  was  rapidly  giving  place  to  sea-island  cotton ; 
but  the  requirements  of  the  new  staple  differed  so  little  from 
those  of  the  old  that  the  plantations  near  the  end  of  the  century 
were  without  doubt  on  much  the  same  scale  as  before  the  Revo- 
lution. In  the  four  South  Carolina  parishes  of  St.  Andrew's, 
St.  John's  Colleton,  St.  Paul's  and  St.  Stephen's  the  census-tak- 
ers of  1790  found  393  slaveholders  with  an  average  of  33.7  slaves 
each,  as  compared  with  a  total  of  28  non-slaveholding  families. 
In  these  and  seven  more  parishes,  comprising  together  the  rural 
portion  of  the  area  known  politically  as  the  Charleston  District, 
there  were  among  the  1643  heads  of  families  1318  slaveholders 
owning  42,949  slaves.     William  Blake  had  695 ;  Ralph  Izard  had 


96  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

594  distributed  on  eight  plantations  in  three  parishes,  and  ten 
more  at  his  Charleston  house;  Nathaniel  Heyward  had  420  on 
his  plantations  and  13  in  Charleston;  William  Washington  had 
380  in  the  country  and  13  in  town;  and  three  members  of  the 
Horry  family  had  340,  229  and  222  respectively  in  a  single  neigh- 
borhood. Altogether  there  were  79  separate  parcels  of  a  hun- 
dred slaves  or  more,  156  of  between  fifty  and  ninety-nine,  318  of 
between  twenty  and  forty-nine,  251  of  between  ten  and  nineteen, 
206  of  from  five  to  nine,  and  209  of  from  two  to  four,  96  of  one 
slave  each,  and  3  whose  returns  in  the  slave  column  are  illeg- 
ible.^^ The  statistics  of  the  Georgetown  and  Beaufort  districts, 
which  comprised  the  rest  of  the  South  Carolina  coast,  show  a 
like  analysis  except  for  a  somewhat  larger  proportion  of  non- 
slaveholders  and  very  small  slaveholders,  who  were,  of  course, 
located  mostly  in  the  towns  and  on  the  sandy  stretches  of  pine- 
barren.  The  detailed  returns  for  Georgia  in  that  census  have 
been  lost.  Were  those  for  her  coastal  area  available  they  would 
surely  show  a  similar  tendency  toward  slaveholding  concentra- 
tion. 

Avenues  of  transportation  abundantly  penetrated  the  whole 
district  in  the  form  of  rivers,  inlets  and  meandering  tidal  creeks. 
Navigation  on  them  was  so  easy  that  watermen  to  the  manner 
born  could  float  rafts  or  barges  for  scores  of  miles  in  any  de- 
sired direction,  without  either  sails  or  oars,  by  catching  the  strong 
ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides  at  the  proper  points.  But  unlike  the 
Chesapeake  estuaries,  the  waterways  of  the  rice  coast  were  gen- 
erally too  shallow  for  ocean-going  vessels.  This  caused  a  not- 
able growth  of  seaports  on  the  available  harbors.  Of  those  in 
South  Carolina,  Charleston  stood  alone  in  the  first  rank,  flanked 
by  Georgetown  and  Beaufort.  In  the  lesser  province  of  Geor- 
gia, Savannah  found  supplement  in  Darien  and  Sunbury.  The 
two  leading  ports  were  also  the  seats  of  government  in  their  re- 
spective colonies.  Charleston  was  in  fact  so  complete  a  focus  of 
commerce,  politics  and  society  that  South  Carolina  was  in  a  sense 
a  city-state. 

^  Heads  of  Families  at  the  First  Census  of  the  United  States,  1790: 
State  of  South  Carolina  (Washington,  1908)  ;  A  Century  of  Population 
Growth  (Washington,  1909),  pp.  190,  191,  197,  198. 


THE  RICE  COAST  97 

The  towns  were  in  sentiment  and  interest  virtually  a  part  of 
the  plantation  community.  The  merchants  were  plantation  fac- 
tors ;  the  lawyers  and  doctors  had  country  patrons ;  the  wealthi- 
est planters  were  town  residents  from  time  to  time;  and  many 
prospering  townsmen  looked  toward  plantation  retirement,  carry- 
ing as  it  did  in  some  degree  the  badge  of  gentility,  as  the  crown 
of  their  careers.  Furthermore  the  urban  negroes,  more  numer- 
ous proportionately  than  anywhere  else  on  the  continent,  kept 
the  citizens  as  keenly  alive  as  the  planters  to  the  intricacies  of 
racial  adjustments.  For  example  Charleston,  which  in  1790  had 
8089  whites,  7864  slaves  and  586  free  negroes,  felt  as  great  anxi- 
ety as  did  the  rural  parishes  at  rumors  of  slave  conspiracies,  and 
on  the  other  hand  she  had  a  like  interest  in  the  improvement  of 
negro  efficiency,  morality  and  good  will. 

The  rice  coast  community  was  a  small  one.  Even  as  measured 
in  its  number  of  slaves  it  bulked  only  one-fourth  as  large,  say  in 
1790,  as  the  group  of  tobacco  commonwealths  or  the  single  sugar 
island  of  Jamaica.  Nevertheless  it  was  a  community  to  be  reck- 
oned with.  Its  people  were  awake  to  their  peculiar  conditions 
and  problems ;  it  had  plenty  of  talented  citizens  to  formulate  poli- 
cies ;  and  it  had  excellent  machinery  for  uniting  public  opinion. 
In  colonial  times,  plying  its  trade  mainly  with  England  and  the 
West  Indies,  it  was  in  little  touch  with  its  continental  neighbors, 
and  it  developed  a  sense  of  separateness.  As  part  of  a  loosely 
administered  empire  its  people  were  content  in  prosperity  and 
self-government.  But  in  a  consolidated  nation  of  diverse  and 
conflicting  interests  it  would  be  likely  on  occasion  to  assert  its 
own  will  and  resist  unitedly  anything  savoring  of  coercion.  In  a 
double  sense  it  was  of  the  southern  South. 


CHAPTER  VI 
_^ „__  Yjjg  NORTHERN  COLONIES 

HAD  any  American  colony  been  kept  wholly  out  of  touch 
with  both  Indians  and  negroes,  the  history  of  slavery 
therein  would  quite  surely  hare  been  a  blank.  But  this 
was  the  case  nowhere.  A  certain  number  of  Indians  were  en- 
slaved in  nearly  every  settlement  as  a  means  of  disposing  of  cap- 
tives taken  in  war;  and  negro  slaves  were  imported  into  every 
prosperous  colony  as  a  mere  incident  of  its  prosperity.  Among 
the  Quakers  the  extent  of  slaveholding  was  kept  small  partly,  or 
perhaps  mainly,  by  scruples  of  conscience;  in  virtually  all  other 
cases  the  scale  was  determined  by  industrial  conditions.  Here 
the  plantation  system  flourished  and  slaves  were  many ;  there  the 
climate  prevented  profits  from  crude  gang  labor  in  farming,  and 
slaves  were  few. 

The  nature  and  causes  of  the  contrast  will  appear  from  com- 
paring the  careers  of  two  Puritan  colonies  launched  at  the  same 
time  but  separated  by  some  thirty  degrees  of  north  latitude.  The 
one  was  planted  on  the  island  of  Old  Providence  lying  off  the 
coast  of  Nicaragua,  the  other  was  on  the  shores  of  Massachu- 
setts bay.  The  founders  of  Old  Providence  were  a  score  of 
Puritan  dignitaries,  including  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  Lord  Saye 
and  Sele,  and  John  Pym,  incorporated  into  the  Westminster  Com- 
pany in  1630  with  a  combined  purpose  of  erecting  a  Puritanic 
haven  and  gaining  profits  for  the  investors.  The  soil  of  the  is- 
land was  known  to  be  fertile,  the  nearby  Spanish  Main  would 
yield  booty  to  privateers,  and  a  Puritan  government  would  main- 
tain orthodoxy.  These  enticements  were  laid  before  John  Win- 
throp  and  his  companions ;  and  when  they  proved  steadfast  in  the 
choice  of  New  England,  several  hundred  others  of  their  general 
sort  embraced  the  tropical  Providence  alternative.  Equipped  as 
it  was  with  all  the  apparatus  of  a  "New  England  Canaan,"  the 
founders  anticipated  a  far  greater  career  than  seemed  likely  of 

98 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  99 

achievement  in  Massachusetts.  Prosperity  came  at  once  in  the 
form  of  good  crops  and  rich  prizes  taken  at  sea.  Some  of  the 
latter  contained  cargoes  of  negro  slaves,  as  was  of  course  ex- 
pected, who  were  distributed  among  the  settlers  to  aid  in  raising 
tobacco;  and  when  a  certain  Samuel  Rishworth  undertook  to 
spread  ideas  of  liberty  among  them  he  was  officially  admonished 
that  religion  had  no  concern  with  negro  slavery  and  that  his  in- 
discretions must  stop.  Slaves  were  imported  so  rapidly  that  the 
outnumbered  whites  became  apprehensive  of  rebelHon.  In  the 
hope  of  promoting  the  importation  of  white  labor,  so  greatly 
preferable  from  the  public  point  of  view,  heavy  impositions  were 
laid  upon  the  employment  of  negroes,  but  with  no  avail.  The 
apprehension  of  evils  was  promptly  justified.  A  number  of  the 
blacks  escaped  to  the  mountains  where  they  dwelt  as  maroons; 
and  in  1638  a  concerted  uprising  proved  so  formidable  that  the 
suppression  of  it  strained  every  resource  of  the  government  and 
the  white  inhabitants.  Three  years  afterward  the  weakened  set- 
tlement was  captured  by  a  Spanish  fleet;  and  this  was  the  end 
of  the  one  Puritan  colony  in  the  tropics.^ 

Massachusetts  was  likewise  inaugurated  by  a  corporation  of 
Puritans,  which  at  the  outset  endorsed  the  institution  of  unfree 
labor,  in  a  sense,  by  sending  over  from  England  180  indentured 
servants  to  labor  on  the  company's  account.  A  food  shortage 
soon  made  it  clear  that  in  the  company's  service  they  could  not 
earn  their  keep;  and  in  1630  the  survivors  of  them  were  set 
free.^  Whether  freedom  brought  them  bread  or  whether  they 
died  of  famine,  the  records  fail  to  tell.  At  any  rate  the  loss  of  the 
investment  in  their  transportation,  and  the  chagrin  of  the  officials, 
materially  hastened  the  conversion  of  the  colony  from  a  com- 
pany enterprise  into  an  industrial  democracy.  The  use  of  un- 
free labor  nevertheless  continued  on  a  private  basis  and  on  a 
relatively  small  scale.  Until  1642  the  tide  of  Puritan  immigra- 
tion continued,  some  of  the  newcomers  of  good  estate  bringing 

*  A.  P.  Newton,  The  Colonising  Activities  of  the  English  Puritans  (New 
Haven,  1914). 

*  Thomas  Dudley,  letter  to  the  Countess  of  Lincoln,  in  Alex.  Young, 
Chronicles  of  the  First  Planters  of  Massachusetts  Bay  (Boston,  1846), 
p.  312. 


100  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

servants  in  their  train.  The  authorities  not  only  countenanced 
this  but  forbade  the  freeing  of  servants  before  the  ends  of  their 
terms,  and  in  at  least  one  instance  the  court  fined  a  citizen  for 
such  a  manumission.^  Meanwhile  the  war  against  the  Pequots 
in  1637  yielded  a  number  of  captives,  whereupon  the  squaws  and 
girls  were  distributed  in  the  towns  of  Massachusetts  and  Connec- 
ticut, and  a  parcel  of  the  boys  was  shipped  off  to  the  tropics  in 
the  Salem  ship  Desire.  On  its  return  voyage  this  thoroughly 
Puritan  vessel  brought  from  Old  Providence  a  cargo  of  tobacco, 
cotton,  and  negroes.*  About  this  time  the  courts  began  to  take 
/  notice  of  Indians  as  runaways ;  and  in  1641  a  "blackmore,"  Min- 
^  carry,  procured  the  inscription  of  his  name  upon  the  public  rec- 
ords by  drawing  upon  himself  an  admonition  from  the  magis- 
trates.^ This  negro,  it  may  safely  be  conjectured,  was  not  a  free- 
man. That  there  were  at  least  several  other  blacks  in  the  colony, 
one  of  whom  proved  unamenable  to  her  master's  improper  com- 
mand, is  told  in  the  account  of  a  contemporary  traveler.^  In  the 
same  period,  furthermore,  the  central  court  of  the  colony  con- 
demned certain  white  criminals  to  become  slaves  to  masters  whom 
the  court  appointed.'^  In  the  light  of  these  things  the  pro-slavery 
inclination  of  the  much-disputed  paragraph  in  the  Body  of  Liber- 
ties, adopted  in  1641,  admits  of  no  doubt.  The  passage  reads : 
"There  shall  never  be  any  bond  slaverie,  villinage  or  captivitie 
amongst  us  unles  it  be  lawfull  captives  taken  in  just  warres,  and 
such  strangers  as  willingly  selle  themselves  or  are  sold  to  us. 
And  these  shall  have  all  the  liberties  and  Christian  usages  which 
the  law  of  God  established  in  Israeli  concerning  such  persons 
doeth  morally  require.  This  exempts  none  from  servitude  who 
shall  be  judged  thereto  by  authoritie."  ^ 

On  the  whole  it  seems  that  the  views  expressed  a  few  years 

^Records  of  the  Court  of  Assistants  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  1630- 1692  (Boston,  1904),  pp.  135,  136. 

*  Letter  of  John  Winthrop  to  William  Bradford,  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society  Collections,  XXXIII,  360;  Winthrop,  Journal  (Original 
Narratives  edition,  New  York,  1908),  I,  260. 

^Records  of  the  Court  of  Assistants,  p.  118. 

"John  Josslyn,  "Two  Voyages  to  New  England,"  in  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society  Collections,  XXIII,  231. 
'  Records  of  the  Court  of  Assistants,  pp.  78,  79,  86. 

*  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XXVIII,  231. 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  loi 

later  by  Emanuel  Downing  in  a  letter  to  his  brother-in-law  John 
Winthrop  were  not  seriously  out  of  harmony  with  the  prevail- 
ing sentiment.  Downing  was  in  hopes  of  a  war  with  the  Narra- 
gansetts  for  two  reasons,  first  to  stop  their  "worship  of  the 
devill,"  and  "2He,  H  upon  a  just  warre  the  Lord  should  deliver 
them  into  our  hands,  we  might  easily  have  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren enough  to  exchange  for  Moores,^  which  wil  be  more  gayn- 
ful  pilladge  for  us  than  wee  conceive,  for  I  doe  not  see  how  wee 
can  thrive  untill  wee  get  into  a  stock  of  slaves  sufficient  to  doe 
all  our  buisines,  for  our  children's  children  will  hardly  see  this 
great  continent  filled  with  people,  soe  that  our  servants  will  still 
desire  freedome  to  plant  for  themselves,  and  not  stay  but  for 
verie  great  wages.^"  And  I  suppose  you  know  verie  well  how  we 
shall  mayntayne  20  Moores  cheaper  than  one  Englishe  servant." 
When  the  four  colonies,  Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  Connecti- 
cut and  New  Haven,  created  the  New  England  Confederation  in 
1643  jfor  joint  and  reciprocal  action  in  matters  of  common  con- 
cern, they  provided  not  only  for  the  intercolonial  rendition  of 
runaway  servants,  including  slaves  of  course,  but  also  for  the  di- 
vision of  the  spoils  of  Indian  wars,  "whether  it  be  in  lands, 
goods  or  persons,"  among  the  participating  colonies.^^  But  per- 
haps the  most  striking  action  taken  by  the  Confederation  in  these 
regards  was  a  resolution  adopted  by  its  commissioners  in  1646, 
in  time  of  peace  and  professedly  in  the  interests  of  peace,  author- 
izing reprisals  for  depredations.  This  provided  that  if  any  citi- 
zen's property  suffered  injury  at  the  hands  of  an  Indian,  the  of- 
fender's village  or  any  other  which  had  harbored  him  might  be 
raided  and  any  inhabitants  thereof  seized  in  satisfaction  "either 
to  serve  or  to  be  shipped  out  and  exchanged  for  negroes  as  the 
cause  will  justly  beare."  ^^  Many  of  these  captives  were  in  fact 
exported  as  merchandise,  whether  as  private  property  or  on  the 
public  account  of  the  several  colonies.^^  The  value  of  Indians 
for  export  was  greater  than  for  local  employment  by  reason  of 

*/.  e.  negroes. 

^"  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XXXVI,  65. 
^New  Haven  Colonial  Records,  1653-1665,  pp.  562-566. 
^Plymouth  Records,  IX,  71. 

"  G.  H.  Moore,  Notes  on  the  History  of  Slavery  in  Massachusetts  (New 
York,  1866),  pp.  30-48. 


I02  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

their  facility  in  escaping  to  their  tribal  kinsmen.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  however,  there  was  some  im- 
portation of  "Spanish  Indians"  as  slaves.^* 

An  early  realization  that  the  price  of  negroes  also  was  greater 
than  the  worth  of  their  labor  under  ordinary  circumstances  in 
New  England  led  the  Yankee  participants  in  the  African  trade  to 
market  their  slave  cargoes  in  the  plantation  colonies  instead  of 
bringing  them  home.  Thus  John  Winthrop  entered  in  his  jour- 
nal in  1645  •  "One  of  our  ships  which  went  to  the  Canaries  with 
pipestaves  in  the  beginning  of  November  last  returned  now  and 
brought  wine  and  sugar  and  salt,  and  some  tobacco,  which  she 
had  at  Barbadoes  in  exchange  for  Africoes  which  she  carried 
from  the  Isle  of  Maio."  ^*  In  their  domestic  industry  the  Massa- 
chusetts people  found  by  experience  that  "many  hands  make  light 
work,  many  hands  make  a  full  fraught,  but  many  mouths  eat  up 
all";  ^^  and  they  were  shrewd  enough  to  apply  the  adage  in  keep- 
ing the  scale  of  their  industrial  units  within  the  frugal  require- 
ments of  their  lives. 

That  the  laws  of  Massachusetts  were  enforced  with  special 
severity  against  the  blacks  is  indicated  by  two  cases  before  the 
central  court  in  1681,  both  of  them  prosecutions  for  arson. 
Maria,  a  negress  belonging  to  Joshua  Lamb  of  Roxbury,  having 
confessed  the  burning  of  two .  dwellings,  was  sentenced  by  the 
Governor  "yt  she  should  goe  from  the  barr  to  the  prison  whence 
she  came  and  thence  to  the  place  of  execution  and  there  be  burnt. 
— ye  Lord  be  mercifull  to  thy  soule,  sd  ye  Govr."  The  other  was 
Jack,  a  negro  belonging  to  Samuel  Wolcott  of  Weathersfield,  who 
upon  conviction  of  having  set  fire  to  a  residence  by  waving  a  fire 
brand  about  in  search  of  victuals,  was  condemned  to  be  hanged 
until  dead  and  then  burned  to  ashes  in  the  fire  with  the  negress 
Maria." 

In  this  period  it  seems  that  Indian  slaves  had  almost  disap- 
peared, and  the  number  of  negroes  was  not  great  enough  to  call 

"  Cotton  Mather,  "Diary,"  in  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collec- 
tions, LXVII,  22,  203. 

^  Winthrop,  Journal,  II,  227. 

"John  Josslyn,  "Two  Voyages  to  New  England," in  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society  Collections,  XXIII,  332. 

^''Records  of  the  Court  of  Assistants,  1630-1692  (Boston,  1901),  p.  198, 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  103 

for  special  police  legislation.  Governor  Bradstreet,  for  example, 
estimated  the  "blacks  or  slaves"  in  the  colony  in  1680  at  "about 
one  hundred  or  one  hundred  and  twenty."^*  But  in  1708  Gov- 
ernor Dudley  reckoned  the  number  in  Boston  at  four  hundred, 
one-half  of  whom  he  said  had  been  born  there,  and  those  in  the 
rest  of  the  colony  at  one  hundred  and  fifty ;  and  in  the  following 
decades  their  number  steadily  mounted,  as  a  concomitant  of  the 
colony's  increasing  prosperity,  until  on  the  eve  of  the  American 
Revolution  they  were  reckoned  at  well  above  five  thousand.  1  Al- 
though they  never  exceeded  two  per  cent,  of  the  gross  popula- 
tion, their  presence  prompted  characteristic  legislation,  dating 
from  about  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  This  on 
the  one  hand  taxed  the  importation  of  negroes  unless  they  were 
promptly  exported  again;  on  the  other  hand  it  forbade  trading 
with  slaves,  restrained  manumission,  established  a  curfew,  pro- 
vided for  the  whipping  of  any  negro  or  mulatto  who  should 
strike  a  "Christian,"  and  prohibited  the  intermarriage  of  the 
races.  On  the  other  hand  it  gave  the  slaves  the  privilege  of 
legal  marriage  with  persons  of  their  own  race,  though  it  did 
not  attempt  to  prevent  the  breaking  up  of  sucl)  a  union  by  the 
sale  and  removal  of  the  husband  or  wife.^^  j  Regarding  the 
status  of  children  there  was  no  law  enacted,  and  custom  ruled. 
The  children  born  of  Indian  slave  mothers  appear  generally  to 
have  been  liberated,  for  as  willingly  would  a  man  nurse  a  viper 
in  his  bosom  as  keep  an  aggrieved  and  able-bodied  redskin  in 
his  household.  But  as  to  negro  children,  although  they  were 
valued  so  slightly  that  occasionally  it  is  said  they  were  given 
to  any  one  who  would  take  them,  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  that  by  force  of  custom  they  were  the  property  of  the 
owners  of  their  mothers.^** 

The  New  Englanders  were  "a  plain  people  struggling  for  ex- 
istence in  a  poor  wilderness.  .  .  .  Their  lives  were  to  the  last  de- 
gree matter  of  fact,  realistic,  hard."  ^^     Shrewd  in  consequence 

"  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XXVIII,  337. 
"  Moore,  Slavery  in  Massachusetts,  pp.  52-55.  / 

^'' Ibid.,  pp.  20-27. 

"  C.  F.  Adams,  Massachusetts,  its  Historians  and  its  History  (Boston, 
1893),  p.  106. 


I04  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

of  their  poverty,  self-righteous  in  consequence  of  their  religion, 
they  took  their  slave-trading  and  their  slaveholding  as  part  of 
their  day's  work  and  as  part  of  God's  goodness  to  His  elect.  In 
practical  effect  the  policy  of  colonial  Massachusetts  toward  the 
backward  races  merits  neither  praise  nor  censure ;  it  was  merely 
commonplace.  A 

"What  has  been  said  in  general  of  Massachusetts  will  apply 
with  almost  equal  fidelity  to  Connecticut.^^  The  number  of  ne- 
groes in  that  colony  was  hardly  appreciable  before  1720.  In  that 
year  Governor  Leete  when  replying  to  queries  from  the  English 
committee  on  trade  and  plantations  took  occasion  to  emphasize 
the  poverty  of  his  people,  and  said  as  to  bond  labor :  "There  are 
but  fewe  servants  amongst  us,  and  less  slaves ;  not  above  30,  as  we 
judge,  in  the  colony.  For  English,  Scotts  and  Irish,  there  are  so 
few  come  in  that  we  cannot  give  a  certain  acco[un]t.  Some 
yeares  come  none;  sometimes  a  famaly  or  two  in  a  year.  And 
for  Blacks,  there  comes  sometimes  3  or  4  in  a  year  from  Barba- 
does ;  and  they  are  sold  usually  at  the  rate  of  22I  a  piece,  some- 
times more  and  sometimes  less,  according  as  men  can  agree  with 
the  master  of  vessels  or  merchants  that  bring  them  hither."  Few 
negroes  had  been  born  in  the  colony,  "and  but  two  blacks  chris- 
tened, as  we  know  of."  ^^  A  decade  later  the  development  of  a 
black  code  was  begun  by  an  enactment  declaring  that  any  negro, 
mulatto,  or  Indian  servant  wandering  outside  his  proper  town 
without  a  pass  would  be  accounted  a  runaway  and  might  be  seized 
by  any  person  and  carried  before  a  magistrate  for  return  to  his 
master,  A  free  negro  so  apprehended  without  a  pass  must  pay 
the  court  costs.  An  act  of  1702  discouraged  manumission  by  or- 
dering that  if  any  freed  negroes  should  come  to  want,  their  for- 
mer owners  were  to  be  held  responsible  for  their  maintenance. 
Then  came  legislation  forbidding  the  sale  of  liquors  to  slaves  with- 
out special  orders  from  their  masters,  prohibiting  the  purchase  of 

**  The  scanty  materials  available  are  summarized  in  B.  C.  Steiner, 
History  of  Slavery  in  Connecticut  (Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies,  XI, 
nos.  9,  10,  Baltimore,  1893),  pp.  9-23,  84.  See  also  W.  C.  Fowler,  "The 
Historical  Status  of  the  Negro  in  Connecticut,"  in  the  Historical  Magazine 
and  Notes  and  Queries,  HI,  12-18,  81-85,  148-153,  260-266. 

'*  Public  Records  of  the  Colony  of  Connecticut,  HI,  298. 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  105 

goods  from  slaves  without  such  orders,  and  providing  a  penalty 
of  not  more  than  thirty  lashes  for  any  negro  who  should  offer  to 
strike  a  white  person;  and  finally  a  curfew  law,  in  '^72,'^,  ordering 
not  above  ten  lashes  for  the  negro,  and  a  fine  of  ten  shillings  upon 
the  master,  for  every  slave  without  a  pass  apprehended  for  being 
out  of  doors  after  nine  o'clock  at  night.^*  These  acts,  which  re- 
mained in  effect  throughout  the  colonial  period,  constituted  a  code 
of  slave  police  which  differed  only  in  degree  and  fullness  from 
those  enacted  by  the  more  southerly  colonies  in  the  same  genera- 
tion. A  somewhat  unusual  note,  however,  was  struck  in  an  act 
of  1730  which  while  penalizing  with  stripes  the  speaking  by  a 
slave  of  such  words  as  would  be  actionable  if  uttered  by  a  free 
person  provided  that  in  his  defence  the  slave  might  make  the 
same  pleas  and  offer  the  same  evidence  as  a  freeman.  The  num- 
ber of  negroes  in  the  colony  rose  to  some  6500  at  the  eve  of  the 
American  Revolution.  Most  of  them  were  held  in  very  small 
parcels,  but  at  least  one  citizen.  Captain  John  Perkins  of  Nor- 
wich, listed  fifteen  slaves  in  his  will. 

Rhode  Island  was  distinguished  from  her  neighbors  by  her  di- 
versity and  liberalism  in  religion,  by  her  great  activity  in  the  Af- 
rican slave  trade,  and  by  the  possession  of  a  tract  of  unusually 
fertile  soil.  This  last,  commonly  known  as  the  Narragansett  dis- 
trict and  comprised  in  the  two  so-called  towns  of  North  and 
South  Kingstown,  lay  on  the  western  shore  of  the  bay,  in  the 
southern  corner  of  the  colony.  Prosperity  from  tillage,  and  es- 
pecially from  dairying  and  horse-breeding,  caused  the  rise  in  that 
neighborhood  of  landholdings  and  slaveholdings  on  a  scale  more 
commensurate  with  those  in  Virginia  than  with  those  elsewhere 
in  New  England.  The  Hazards,  Champlins,  Robinsons,  and 
some  others  accumulated  estates  ranging  from  five  to  ten  thou- 
sand acres  in  extent,  each  with  a  corps  of  bondsmen  somewhat  in 
proportion.  In  1730,  for  example.  South  Kingstown  had  a  pop- 
ulation of  965  whites,  333  negroes  and  233  Indians;  and  for  a 
number  of  years  afterward  those  who  may  safely  be  assumed  to 
have  been  bondsmen,  white,  red  and  black,  continued  to  be  from 

**  Public  Records  of  the  Colony  of  Connecticut,  IV,  40,  376;  V,  52,  53; 
VI,  390,  391. 


io6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

a  third  to  a  half  as  many  as  the  free  inhabitants.^'*  It  may  be 
noted  that  the  prevalent  husbandry  was  not  such  as  generally  at- 
tracted unfree  labor  in  other  districts,  and  that  the  climate  was 
poorly  suited  to  a  negro  population.  The  question  then  arises, 
Why  was  there  so  large  a  recourse  to  negro  slave  labor  ?  The  an- 
swer probably  lies  in  the  proximity  of  Newport,  the  main  focus 
of  African  trading  in  American  ships.  James  Browne  wrote  in 
1737  from  Providence,  which  was  also  busy  in  the  trade,  to  his 
brother  Obadiah  who  was  then  in  Southern  waters  with  an  Afri- 
can cargo  and  who  had  reported  poor  markets:  'Tf  you  cannot 
sell  all  your  slaves  to  your  mind,  bring  some  of  them  home ;  I  be- 
lieve they  will  sell  well."  ~^  This  bringing  of  remainders  home 
doubtless  enabled  the  nearby  townsmen  and  farmers  to  get  slaves 
from  time  to  time  at  bargain  prices.  The  whole  colony  indeed 
came  to  have  a  relatively  large  proportion  of  blacks.  In  1749 
there  were  33,773  whites  and  3077  negroes;  in  1756  there  were 
35,939  and  4697  respectively;  and  in  1774,  59,707  and  3668.  Of 
this  last  number  Newport  contained  1246,  South  Kingstown  440, 
Providence  303,  Portsmouth  122,  and  Bristol  114.^'' 

The  earliest  piece  of  legislation  in  Rhode  Island  concerning  ne- 
groes was  of  an  anti-slavery  character.  This  was  an  act  adopted 
by  the  joint  government  of  Providence  and  Warwick  in  1652, 
when  for  the  time  being  those  towns  were  independent  of  the 
rest.  It  required,  under  a  penalty  of  £40,  that  all  negroes  be 
freed  after  having  rendered  ten  years  of  service. ^^  This  act  may 
be  attributed  partly  perhaps  to  the  liberal  influence  of  Roger  Wil- 
liams, and  partly  to  the  virtual  absence  of  negroes  in  the  towns 
near  the  head  of  the  bay.  It  long  stood  unrepealed,  but  it  was 
probably  never  enforced,  for  no  sooner  did  negroes  become  nu- 
merous than  a  conservative  reaction  set  in  which  deprived  this  pe- 
culiar law  of  any  public  sanction  it  may  have  had  at  the  time  of 
enactment.    When  in  the  early  eighteenth  century  legislation  was 

'^  Edward  Channing,  The  Narragansett  Planters  (Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity Studies,  IV,  no.  3,  Baltimore,  1886). 

**  Gertrude  S.  Kimball,  Providence  in  Colonial  Times  (Boston,  1912), 
p.  247. 

"W.  D.  Johnston,  "Slavery  in  Rhode  Island,  I755-I776,"  in  Rhode 
Island  Historical  Society  Publications,  new  series,  II,  126,  127. 

"'  Rhode  Island  Colonial  Records,  I,  243. 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  107 

resumed  in  regard  to  negroes,  it  took  the  form  of  a  slave  code 
much  like  that  of  Connecticut  but  with  an  added  act,  borrowed 
perhaps  from  a  Southern  colony,  providing  that  slaves  charged 
with  theft  be  tried  by  impromptu  courts  consisting  of  two  or  more 
justices  of  the  peace  or  town  officers,  and  that  appeal  might  be 
taken  to  a  court  of  regular  session  only  at  the  master's  request 
and  upon  his  giving  bond  for  its  prosecution.  Some  of  the 
towns,  furthermore,  added  by-laws  of  their  own  for  more  thor- 
ough police.  South  Kingstown  for  instance  adopted  an  order 
that  if  any  slave  were  found  in  the  house  of  a  free  negro,  both 
guest  and  host  were  to  be  whipped. ^^  The  Rhode  Island  Quak- 
ers in  annual  meeting  began  as  early  as  1717  to  question  the  pro- 
priety of  importing  slaves,  and  other  persons  from  time  to  time 
echoed  their  sentiments  ;  but  it  was  not  until  just  before  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution  that  legislation  began  to  interfere  with  the  trade 
or  the  institution. 

The  colonies  of  Plymouth  and  New  Haven  in  the  period  of 
their  separate  existence,  and  the  colonies  of  Maine  and  New 
Hampshire  throughout  their  careers,  are  negligible  in  a  general 
account  of  negro  slavery  because  their  climate  and  their  indus- 
trial requirements,  along  with  their  poverty,  prevented  them  from 
importing  any  appreciable  number  of  negroes. 

New  Netherland  had  the  distinction  of  being  founded  and  gov- 
erned by  a  great  slave-trading  corporation — the  Dutch  West  In- 
dia Company — which  endeavored  to  extend  the  market  for  its 
human  merchandise  whithersoever  its  influence  reached.  This 
pro-slavery  policy  was  not  wholly  selfish,  for  the  directors  appear 
to  have  believed  that  the  surest  way  to  promote  a  colony's  wel- 
fare was  to  make  slaves  easy  to  buy.  In  the  infancy  of  New 
Netherland,  when  it  consisted  merely  of  two  trading  posts,  the 
company  delivered  its  first  batch  of  negroes  at  New  Amsterdam. 
But  to  its  chagrin,  the  settlers  would  buy  very  few ;  and  even  the 
company's  grant  of  great  patroonship  estates  failed  to  promote  a 
plantation  regime.  Devoting  their  energies  more  to  the  Indian 
trade  than  to  agriculture,  the  people  had  little  use  for  farm 
hands,  while  in  domestic  service,  if  the  opinion  of  the  Reverend 

'^  Channing,  The  Narragansctt  Planters,  p.  11. 


lo8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Jonas  Michaelius  be  a  true  index,  the  negroes  were  found  "thiev- 
ish, lazy  and  useless  trash."  It  might  perhaps  be  surmised  that 
the  Dutch  were  too  easy-going  for  success  in  slave  management, 
were  it  not  that  those  who  settled  in  Guiana  became  reputed  the 
severest  of  all  plantation  masters.  The  bulk  of  the  slaves  in  New 
Netherland,  left  on  the  company's  hands,  were  employed  now  in 
building  fortifications,  now  in  tillage.  But  the  company,  having 
no  adequate  means  of  supervising  them  in  routine,  changed  the 
status  of  some  of  the  older  ones  in  1644  from  slavery  to  tribute- 
paying.  That  is  to  say,  it  gave  eleven  of  them  their  freedom  on 
condition  that  each  pay  the  company  every  year  some  twenty-two 
bushels  of  grain  and  a  hog  of  a  certain  value.  At  the  same  time 
it  provided,  curiously,  that  their  children  already  born  or  yet  to 
be  born  were  to  be  the  company's  slaves.  It  was  proposed  at  one 
time  by  some  of  the  inhabitants,  and  again  by  Governor  Stuy- 
vesant,  that  negroes  be  armed  with  tomahawks  and  sent  in  puni- 
tive expeditions  against  the  Indians,  but  nothing  seems  to  have 
come  of  that. 

The  Dutch  settlers  were  few,  and  the  Dutch  farmers  fewer. 
But  as  years  went  on  a  slender  stream  of  immigration  entered  the 
province  from  New  England,  settling  mainly  on  Long  Island  and 
in  Westchester ;  and  these  came  to  be  among  the  company's  best 
customers  for  slaves.  The  villagers  of  Gravesend,  indeed,  peti- 
tioned in  165 1  that  the  slave  supply  might  be  increased.  Soon 
afterward  the  company  opened  the  trade  to.  private  ships,  and 
then  sent  additional  supplies  on  its  own  account  to  be  sold  at  auc- 
tion. It  developed  hopes,  even,  that  New  Amsterdam  might  be 
made  a  slave  market  for  the  neighboring  English  colonies.  A 
parcel  sold  at  public  outcry  in  1661  brought  an  average  price  of 
440  florins,^"  which  so  encouraged  the  authorities  that  larger  ship- 
ments were  ordered.  Of  a  parcel  arriving  in  the  spring  of  1664 
and  described  by  Stuyvesant  as  on  the  average  old  and  inferior, 
six  men  were  reserved  for  the  company's  use  in  cutting  timber, 
five  women  were  set  aside  as  unsalable,  and  the  remaining  twen- 
ty-nine, of  both  sexes,  were  sold  at  auction  at  prices  ranging  from 
255  to  615  florins.     But  a  great  cargo  of  two  or  three  hundred 

*•  The  florin  has  a  value  of  forty  cents. 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  109 

slaves  which  followed  in  the  same  year  reached  port  only  in  time 
for  the  vessel  to  be  captured  by  the  English  fleet  which  took  pos- 
session of  New  Netherland  and  converted  it  into  the  province  of 
New  York.31 

The  change  of  the  flag  was  very  slow  in  bringing  any  pro- 
nounced change  in  the  colony's  general  regime.  The  Duke  of 
York's  government  was  autocratic  and  pro-slavery  and  the  in- 
habitants, though  for  some  decades  they  bought  few  slaves,  were 
nothing  averse  to  the  institution.  After  the  colony  was  converted 
into  a  royal  province  by  the  accession  of  James  II  to  the  English 
throne  popular  self-government  was  gradually  introduced  and  a 
light  import  duty  was  laid  upon  slaves.  But  increasing  prosper- 
ity caused  the  rise  of  slave  importations  to  an  average  of  about 
one  hundred  a  year  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury ;  ^^  and  in  spite  of  the  rapid  increase  of  the  whites  during  the 
rest  of  the  colonial  period  the  proportion  of  the  negroes  was 
steadily  maintained  at  about  one-seventh  of  the  whole.  They  be- 
came fairly  numerous  in  all  districts  except  the  extreme  fron- 
tier, but  in  the  counties  fronting  New  York  Harbor  their  ratio 
was  somewhat  above  the  average. ^^  In  1755  a  special  census  was 
taken  of  slaves  older  than  fourteen  years,  and  a  large  part  of  its 
detailed  returns  has  been  preserved.  These  reports  from  some 
two-score  scattered  localities  enumerate  2456  slaves,  about  one- 
third  of  the  total  negro  population  of  the  specified  age ;  and  they 
yield  unusually  definite  data  as  to  the  scale  of  slaveholdings. 
Lewis  Morris  of  Morrisania  had  twenty-nine  slaves  above  four- 
teen years  old;  Peter  DeLancy  of  Westchester  Borough  had 
twelve ;  and  the  following  had  ten  each :  Thomas  Dongan  of 
Staten  Island,  Martinus  Hoffman  of  Dutchess  County,  David 
Jones  of  Oyster  Bay,  Rutgert  Van  Brunt  of  New  Utrecht,  and 
Isaac  Willett  of  Westchester  Borough.     Seventy-two  others  had 

'^This  account  is  mainly  drawn  from  A.  J.  Northrup,  "Slavery  in  New 
York,"  in  the  New  York  State  Library  Report  for  1900,  pp.  246-254,  and 
from  E.  B.  O'Callaghan  ed.,  Voyages  of  the  Slavers  St.  John  and  Arms  of 
Amsterdam,  with  additional  papers  illustrative  of  the  slave  trade  under 
the  Dutch  (Albany,  1867),  pp.  99-213. 

^-Documentary  History  of  New  York  (Albany,  1850),  I,  482. 

"^Ibid.,  I,  467-474- 


no  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

from  five  to  nine  each,  and  1048  had  still  smaller  holdings."  The 
average  quota  was  two  slaves  of  working  age,  and  presumably 
the  same  number  of  slave  children.  That  is  to  say,  the  typical 
slaveholding  family  had  a  single  small  family  of  slaves  in  its  ser- 
vice. From  available  data  it  may  be  confidently  surmised,  fur- 
thermore, that  at  least  one  household  in  every  ten  among  the 
eighty-three  thousand  white  inhabitants  of  the  colony  held  one  or 
more  slaves.  These  two  features — the  multiplicity  of  slavehold- 
ings  and  the  virtually  uniform  pettiness  of  their  scale — consti- 
tuted a  regime  never  paralleled  in  equal  volume  elsewhere.  The 
economic  interest  in  slave  property,  nowhere  great,  was  widely 
diffused.  The  petty  masters,  however,  maintained  so  Httle  sys- 
tem in  the  management  of  their  slaves  that  the  public  problem  of 
social  control  was  relatively  intense.  It  was  a  state  of  affairs 
conducing  to  severe  legislation,  and  to  hysterical  action  in  emer- 
gencies. 

The  first  important  law,  enacted  in  1702,  repeated  an  earlier 
prohibition  against  trading  with  slaves;  authorized  masters  to 
chastise  their  slaves  at  discretion;  forbade  the  meeting  of  more 
than  three  slaves  at  any  time  or  place  unless  in  their  masters'  serv- 
ice or  by  their  consent;  penalized  with  imprisonment  and  lashes 
the  striking  of  a  "Christian"  by  a  slave ;  made  the  seductor  or 
harborer  of  a  runaway  slave  liable  for  heavy  damages  to  the 
owner;  and  excluded  slave  testimony  from  the  courts  except  as 
against  other  slaves  charged  with  conspiracy.  In  order,  how- 
ever, that  undue  loss  to  masters  might  be  averted,  it  provided 
that  if  by  theft  or  other  trespass  a  slave  injured  any  person  to 
the  extent  of  not  more  than  five  pounds,  the  slave  was  not  to 
be  sentenced  to  death  as  in  some  cases  a  freeman  might  have  been 
under  the  laws  of  England  then  current,  but  his  master  was  to 
be  liable  for  pecuniary  satisfaction  and  the  slave  was  merely  to  be 
whipped.  Three  years  afterward  a  special  act  to  check  the  flee- 
ing to  Canada  provided  a  death  penalty  for  any  slave  from  the 
city  and  county  of  Albany  found  traveling  more  than  forty  miles 
north  of  that  city,  the  master  to  be  compensated  from  a  special 
tax  on  slave  property  in  the  district.  'And  in  1706  an  act,  passed 

•'*  Docufnentary  History  of  Ne-po  York,  JII,  505-521, 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  iii 

mainly  to  quiet  any  fears  as  to  the  legal  consequences  of  Chris-      / 
tianization,  declared  that  baptism  had  no  liberating  effect,  and    / 
that  every  negro  or  mulatto  child  should  inherit  the  status  of  its  / 
mother.  ._ 

The  murder  of  a  white  family  by  a  quartet  of  slaves  in  con- 
spiracy not  only  led  to  their  execution,  by  burning  in  one  case,  but 
prompted  an  enactment  in  1708  that  slaves  charged  with  the 
murder  of  whites  might  be  tried  summarily  by  three  justices  of 
the  peace  and  be  put  to  death  in  such  manner  as  the  enormity  of 
their  crimes  might  be  deemed  to  merit,  and  that  slaves  executed  / 
under  this  act  should  be  paid  for  by  the  public.  [Thus  stood  the 
law  when  a  negro  uprising  in  the  city  of  New  York  in  1712  and 
a  reputed  conspiracy  there  in  1741  brought  atrociously  numer- 
ous and  severe  punishments,  as  will  be  related  in  another  chap- 
ter.^^  On  the  former  of  these  occasions  the  royally  appointed 
governor  intervened  in  several  cases  to  prevent  judicial  murder. 
The  assembly  on  the  other  hand  set  to  work  at  once  on  a  more 
elaborate  negro  law  which  restricted  manumissions,  prohibited 
free  negroes  from  holding  real  estate,  and  increased  the  rigor  of 
slave  control.  Though  some  of  the  more  drastic  provisions  were 
afterward  relaxed  in  response  to  the  more  sober  sense  of  the  com- 
munity, the  negro  code  continued  for  the  rest  of  the  colonial  pe- 
riod to  be  substantially  as  elaborated  between  1702  and  1712.^^  The 
disturbance  of  1741  prompted  little  new  legislation  and  left 
little  permanent  impress  upon  the  community.  When  the  panic 
passed  the  petty  masters  resumed  their  customary  indolence  of 
control  and  the  police  officers,  justly  incredulous  of  public  dan- 
ger, let  the  rigors  of  the  law  relapse  into  desuetude. 

As  to  New  Jersey,  the  eastern  half,  settled  largely  from  New 
England,  was  like  in  conditions  and  close  in  touch  with  New 
York,  while  the  western  half,  peopled  considerably  by  Quakers, 
had  a  much  smaller  proportion  of  negroes  and  was  in  sentiment 
akin  to  Pennsylvania.     As  was  generally  the  case  in  such  con- 

"  Below,  pp.  470,  471. 

"The  laws  are  summarized  and  quoted  in  A.  J.  Northrup  "Slavery  in 
New  York,"  in  the  New  York  State  Library  Report  for  1900,  pp.  254-272, 
See  also  E.  V.  Morgan,  "Slavery  in  New  York,"  in  the  American  His- 
torical Association  Papers  (New  York,  1891),  V,  335-350. 


112  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

trast  of  circumstances,  that  portion  of  the  province  which  faced 
the  greater  problem  of  control  determined  the  legislation  for  the 
whole.  New  Jersey,  indeed,  borrowed  the  New  York  slave  code 
in  all  essentials.  The  administration  of  the  law,  furthermore, 
was  about  as  it  was  in  New  York,  in  the  eastern  counties  at 
least.  An  alleged  conspiracy  near  Somerville  in  1734  while  it 
cost  the  reputed  ringleader  his  life,  cost  his  supposed  colleagues 
their  ears  only.  On  the  other  hand  sentences  to  burning  at  the 
stake  were  more  frequent  as  punishment  for  ordinary  crimes; 
and  on  such  occasions  the  citizens  of  the  neighborhood  turned 
honest  shillings  by  providing  faggots  for  the  fire.  For  the  west- 
ern counties  the  published  annals  concerning  slavery  are  brief 
wellnigh  to  blankness.^^ 

Pennsylvania's  place  in  the  colonial  slaveholding  sisterhood 
Was  a  little  unusual  in  that  negroes  formed  a  smaller  proportion 
of  the  population  than  her  location  between  New  York  and 
Maryland  might  well  have  warranted.  This  was  due  not  to  her 
laws  nor  to  the  type  of  her  industry  but  to  the  disrelish  of  slave- 
holding  felt  by  many  of  her  Quaker  and  German  inhabitants  and 
to  the  greater  abundance  of  white  immigrant  labor  whether  wage- 
earning  or  indentured.  Negroes  were  present  in  the  region  be- 
fore Penn's  colony  was  founded.  The  new  government  recog- 
nized slavery  as  already  instituted.  Penn  himself  acquired  a 
few  slaves;  and  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
assembly  legislated  much  as  New  York  was  doing,  though  some- 
what more  mildly,  for  the  fuller  control  of  the  negroes  both  slave 
and  free.  The  number  of  blacks  and  mulattoes  reached  at  the 
middle  of  the  century  about  eleven  thousand,  the  great  majority 
of  them  slaves.  They  were  most  numerous,  of  course,  in  the 
older  counties  which  lay  in  the  southeastern  corner  of  the  prov- 
ince, and  particularly  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia.  Occasional 
owners  had  as  many  as  twenty  or  thirty  slaves,  employed  either 
on  country  estates  or  in  iron-works,  but  the  typical  holding  was 
on  a  petty  scale.  There  were  no  slave  insurrections  in  the  col- 
ony, no  plots  of  any  moment,  and  no  panics  of  dread.     The  po- 

"H.  S.  Cooley,  A  Study  of  Slavery  in  Nezv  Jersey  (Johns  Hopkins 
University  Studies,  XIV,  nos.  9,  10,  Baltimore,  1896). 


THE  NORTHERN  COLONIES  113 

lice  was  apparently  a  little  more  thorough  than  in  New  York, 
partly  because  of  legislation,  which  the  white  mechanics  pro- 
cured, lessening  negro  competition  by  forbidding  masters  to  hire 
out  their  slaves.  From  travelers'  accounts  it  would  appear  that 
the  relation  of  master  and  slave  in  Pennsylvania  was  in  general 
more  kindly  than  anywhere  else  on  the  continent;  but  from  the 
abundance  of  newspaper  advertisements  for  runaways  it  would 
seem  to  have  been  of  about  average  character.  The  truth  prob- 
ably lies  as  usual  in  the  middle  ground,  that  Pennsylvania  mas- 
ters were  somewhat  unusually  considerate.  The  assembly  at- 
tempted at  various  times  to  check  slave  importations  by  levying 
prohibitive  duties,  which  were  invariably  disallowed  by  the  Eng- 
lish crown.  On  the  other  hand,  in  spite  of  the  endeavors  of 
Sandiford,  Lay,  Woolman  and  Benezet,  all  of  them  Pennsylvani- 
ans,  it  took  no  steps  toward  relaxing  racial  control  until  the  end 
of  the  colonial  period.^^ 

In  the  Northern  colonies  at  large  the  slaves  imported  were 
more  generally  drawn  from  the  West  Indies  than  directly  from 
Africa.  The  reasons  were  several.  Small  parcels,  better  suited 
to  the  retail  demand,  might  be  brought  more  profitably  from  the 
sugar  islands  whither  New  England,  New  York  and  Pennsylvania 
ships  were  frequently  plying  than  from  Guinea  whence  special 
voyages  must  be  made.  Familiarity  with  the  English  language 
and  the  rudiments  of  civilization  at  the  outset  were  more  essen- 
tial to  petty  masters  than  to  the  owners  of  plantation  gangs  who 
had  means  for  breaking  in  fresh  Africans  by  deputy.  But  most 
important  of  all,  a  sojourn  in  the  West  Indies  would  lessen  the 
shock  of  acclimatization,  severe  enough  under  the  best  of  cir- 
cumstances. The  number  of  negroes  who  died  from  it  was  prob- 
ably not  small,  and  of  those  who  survived  some  were  incapaci- 
tated and  bedridden  with  each  recurrence  of  winter. 

Slavery  did  not,  and  perhaps  could  not,  become  an  important 
industrial  institution  in  any  Northern  community ;  and  the  prob- 
lem of  racial  adjustments  was  never  as  acute  as  it  was  gener- 
ally thought  to  be.     In  not  more  than  two  or  three  counties  do 

^E.  R.  Turner,  The  Negro  in  Pennsylvania  (Washington,  1911)  ;  R.  R 
Wright,  Jr.,  The  Negro  in  Pennsylvania  (Philadelphia,  1912). 


114  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  negroes  appear  to  have  numbered  more  than  one  fifth  of  the 
population ;  and  by  reason  of  being  distributed  in  detail  they  were 
more  nearly  assimilated  to  the  civilization  of  the  dominant  race 
than  in  southerly  latitudes  where  they  were  held  in  gross.  They 
nevertheless  continued  to  be  regarded  as  strangers  within  the 
gates,  by  some  welcomed  because  they  were  slaves,  by  others  not 
welcomed  even  though  they  were  in  bondage.  By  many  they  were 
somewhat  unreasonably  feared;  by  few  were  they  even  reason- 
ably loved.  The  spirit  not  of  love  but  of  justice  and  the  public 
advantage  was  destined  to  bring  the  end  of  their  bondage. 


CHAPTER  VII 
REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION 

AFTER  the  whole  group  of  colonies  had  long  been  left  in 
salutary  neglect  by  the  British  authorities,  George  III 
and  his  ministers  undertook  the  creation  of  an  imperial 
control ;  and  Parliament  was  too  much  at  the  king's  command  for 
opposing  statesmen  to  stop  the  project.  The  Americans  wak- 
ened resentfully  to  the  new  conditions.  The  revived  navigation 
laws,  the  stamp  act,  the  tea  duty,  and  the  dispatch  of  redcoats  to 
coerce  Massachusetts  were  a  cumulation  of  grievances  not  to  be 
borne  by  high-spirited  people.  For  some  years  the  colonial 
spokesmen  tried  to  persuade  the  British  government  that  it  was 
violating  historic  and  constitutional  rights ;  but  these  efforts  had 
little  success.  To  the  argument  that  the  empire  was  composed 
of  parts  mutually  independent  in  legislation,  it  was  replied  that 
Parliament  had  legislated  imperially  ever  since  the  empire's  be- 
ginning, and  that  the  colonial  assemblies  possessed  only  such 
powers  as  Parliament  might  allow.  The  plea  of  no  taxation  with- 
out representation  was  answered  by  the  doctrine  that  all  elements 
in  the  empire  were  virtually  represented  in  Parliament.  The 
stress  laid  by  the  colonials  upon  their  rights  as  Britons  met  the 
administration's  emphasis  upon  the  duty  of  all  British  subjects 
to  obey  British  laws.  This  countering  of  pleas  of  exemption 
with  pronouncements  of  authority  drove  the  complainants  at 
length  from  proposals  of  reform  to  projects  of  revolution.  For 
this  the  solidarity  of  the  continent  was  essential,  and  that  was  to 
be  gained  only  by  the  most  vigorous  agitation  with  the  aid  of  the 
most  effective  campaign  cries.  The  claim  of  historic  immunities 
was  largely  discarded  in  favor  of  the  more  glittering  doctrines 
current  in  the  philosophy  of  the  time.  The  demands  for  local 
self-government  or  for  national  independence,  one  or  both  of 
which  were  the  genuine  issues  at  stake,  were  subordinated  to  the 

us 


Ii6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

claim  of  the  inherent  and  inalienable  rights  of  man.  Hence  the 
culminating  formulation  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence: 
"We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal,  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  in- 
alienable rights,  that  among  these  are  hfe,  liberty  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness."  The  cause  of  the  community  was  to  be  won  un- 
der the  guise  of  the  cause  of  individuals. 

In  Jefferson's  original  draft  of  the  great  declaration  there  was 
a  paragraph  indicting  the  king  for  having  kept  open  the  African 
slave  trade  against  colonial  efforts  to  close  it,  and  for  having  vio- 
lated thereby  the  "most  sacred  rights  of  life  and  liberty  of  a  dis- 
tant people,  who  never,  offended  him,  captivating  them  into  slav- 
ery in  another  hemisphere,  or  to  incur  miserable  death  in  their 
transportation  thither."  This  passage,  according  to  Jefferson's 
account,  "was  struck  out  in  complaisance  to  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia,  who  had  never  attempted  to  restrain  the  importation  of 
slaves  and  who  on  the  contrary  still  wished  to  continue  it.  Our 
Northern  brethren  also  I  believe,"  Jefferson  continued,  "felt  a  lit- 
tle tender  under  these  censures,  for  though  their  people  have  very 
few  slaves  themselves,  yet  they  have  been  pretty  considerable 
carriers  of  them  to  others."^  By  reason  of  the  general  stress 
upon  the  inherent  liberty  of  all  men,  however,  the  question  of 
negro  status,  despite  its  omission  from  the  Declaration,  was  an 
inevitable  corollary  to  that  of  American  independence. 

Negroes  had  a  barely  appreciable  share  in  precipitating  the 
Revolution  and  in  waging  the  war.  The  "Boston  Massacre"  was 
occasioned  in  part  by  an  insult  offered  by  a  slave  to  a  British  sol- 
dier two  days  before ;  and  in  that  celebrated  affray  itself,  Crispus 
Attucks,  a  mulatto  slave,  was  one  of  the  five  inhabitants  of  Bos- 
ton slain.  During  the  course  of  the  war  free  negro  and  slave 
enlistments  were  encouraged  by  law  in  the  states  where  racial  con- 
trol was  not  reckoned  vital,  and  they  were  informally  permitted 
in  the  rest.  The  British  also  utilized  this  resource  in  some  de- 
gree. As  early  as  November  7,  1775,  Lord  Dunmore,  the  ousted 
royal  governor  of  Virginia,  issued  a  proclamation  offering  free- 

*  Herbert  Friedenwald,  The  Declaration  of  Independence  (New  York, 
1904),  pp.  130,  272. 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  117 

dom  to  all  slaves  "appertaining  to  rebels"  who  would  join  him 
"for  the  more  speedy  reducing  this  colony  to  a  proper  sense  of 
their  duty  to  his  Majesty's  crown  and  dignity."  ^  In  reply  the 
Virginia  press  warned  the  negroes  against  British  perfidy;  and 
the  revolutionary  government,  while  announcing  the  penalties  for 
servile  revolt,  promised  freedom  to  such  as  would  promptly  de- 
sert the  British  standard.  Some  hundreds  of  negroes  appear  to 
have  joined  Dunmore,  but  they  did  not  save  him  from  being 
driven  away.^ 

When  several  years  afterward  military  operations  were  trans- 
ferred to  the  extreme  South,  where  the  whites  were  few  and  the 
blacks  many,  the  problem  of  negro  enlistments  became  at  once 
more  pressing  and  more  delicate.  Henry  Laurens  of  South  Caro- 
lina proposed  to  General  Washington  in  March,  1779,  the  enroll- 
ment of  three  thousand  blacks  in  the  Southern  department. 
Hamilton  warmly  endorsed  the  project,  and  Washington  and 
Madison  more  guardedly.  Congress  recommended  it  to  the 
states  concerned,  and  pledged  itself  to  reimburse  the  masters  and 
to  set  the  slaves  free  with  a  payment  of  fifty  dollars  to  each  of 
these  at  the  end  of  the  war.  Eventually  Colonel  John  Laurens, 
the  son  of  Henry,  went  South  as  an  enthusiastic  emissary  of  the 
scheme,  only  to  meet  rebuff  and  failure.^  Had  the  negroes  in 
general  possessed  any  means  of  concerted  action,  they  might  con- 
ceivably have  played  ofif  the  British  and  American  belligerents  to 
their  own  advantage.  ^^  In  actuality,  however,  they  were  a  passive 
element  whose  fate  was  affected  only  so  far  as  the  master  race 
determined.  1 

Some  of  the  politicians  who  championed  the  doctrine  of  lib- 
erty inherent  and  universal  used  it  merely  as  a  means  to  a  spe- 
cific and  somewhat  unrelated  end.  Others  endorsed  it  literally 
and  with  resolve  to  apply  it  wherever  consistency  might  require. 
How  could  they  justly  continue  to  hold  men  in  bondage  when 
in  vindication  of  their  own  cause  they  were  asserting  the  right  of 

'American  Archives,  Force  ed.,  fourth  series,  III,  1385. 
^Ibid.,  Ill,  1387;  IV,  84,  8s;  V,  160,  162. 

*G.  W.  Williams,  History  of  the  Negro  Race  in  America  (New  York. 
[1882]),  I,  353-362. 


ii8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

all  men  to  be  free  ?  Thomas  Jefferson,  Patrick  Henry,  Edmund 
Randolph  and  many  less  prominent  slaveholders  were  disquieted 
by  the  question.  Instances  of  private  manumission  became  fre- 
quent, and  memorials  were  fairly  numerous  advocating  anti- 
slavery  legislation.  Indeed  Samuel  Hopkins  of  Rhode  Island  in 
a  pamphlet  of  1776  declared  that  slavery  in  Anglo-America  was 
"without  the  express  sanction  of  civil  government,"  and  censured 
the  colonial  authorities  and  citizens  for  having  connived  in  the 
maintenance  of  the  wrongful  institution. 

As  to  public  acts,  the  Vermont  convention  of  1777  when  claim- 
ing statehood  for  its  community  framed  a  constitution  with  a  bill 
of  rights  asserting  the  inherent  freedom  of  all  men  and  attach- 
ing to  it  an  express  prohibition  of  slavery.  The  opposition  of 
New  York  delayed  Vermont's  recognition  until  1791  when  she 
was  admitted  as  a  state  with  this  provision  unchanged.  Similar 
inherent-liberty  clauses  but  without  the  expressed  anti-slavery  ap- 
plication were  incorporated  into  the  bills  of  rights  adopted  sev- 
erally by  Virginia  in  1776,  Massachusetts  in  1780,  and  New 
Hampshire  in  1784.  In  the  first  of  these  the  holding  of  slaves 
persisted  undisturbed  by  this  action ;  and  in  New  Hampshire  the 
custom  died  from  the  dearth  of  slaves  rather  than  from  the  nat- 
ural-rights clause.  In  Massachusetts  likewise  it  is  plain  from 
copious  contemporary  evidence  that  abolition  was  not  intended 
by  the  framers  of  the  bill  of  rights  nor  thought  by  the  people  or 
the  officials  to  have  been  accomplished  thereby."  One  citizen, 
indeed,  who  wanted  to  keep  his  woman  slave  but  to  be  rid  of  her 
child  soon  to  be  born,  advertised  in  the  Independent  Chronicle  of 
Boston  at  the  close  of  1780:  "A  negro  child,  soon  expected,  of 
a  good  breed,  may  be  owned  by  any  person  inclining  to  take  it, 
and  money  with  it."  *  The  courts  of  the  commonwealth,  how- 
ever, soon  began  to  reflect  anti-slavery  sentiment,  as  Lord  Mans- 
field had  done  in  the  preceding  decade  in  England,''  and  to  make 
use  of  the  bill  of  rights  to  destroy  the  masters'  dominion.     The 

•G.  H.  Moore,  Notes  on  the  History  of  Slavery  in  Massachusetts,  pp. 
181-209. 

'Ibid.,  p.  208.  So  far  as  the  present  writer's  knowledge  extends,  this 
item  is  without  parallel  at  any  other  time  or  place. 

^  The  case  of  James  Somerset  on  habeas  corpus,  in  Howell's  State 
Trials,  XX,  §  548. 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  119 

/ 
decisive  case  was  the  prosecution  of  Nathaniel  Jennison  of 
Worcester  County  for  assault  and  imprisonment  alleged  to  have 
been  committed  upon  his  absconded  slave  Quork  Walker  in  the 
process  of  his  recovery.  On  the  trial  in  1783  the  jury  responded 
to  a  strong  anti-slavery  charge  from  Chief  Justice  Cushing  by 
returning  a  verdict  against  Jennison,  and  the  court  fined  him  - 
£50  and  costs. 

This  action  prompted  the  negroes  generally  to  leave  their  mas- 
ters, though  some  were  deterred  "on  account  of  their  age  and 
infirmities,  or  because  they  did  not  know  how  to  provide  for 
themselves,  or  for  some  pecuniary  consideration."  '  The  former 
slaveholders  now  felt  a  double  grievance :  they  were  deprived  of 
their  able-bodied  negroes  but  were  not  relieved  of  the  legal  obli- 
gation to  support  such  others  as  remained  on  their  hands.  Peti- 
tions for  their  relief  were  considered  by  the  legislature  but  never 
acted  upon.  The  legal  situation  continued  vague,  for  although 
an  act  of  1788  forbade  citizens  to  trade  in  slaves  and  another 
penalized  the  sojourn  for  more  than  two  months  in  Massachu- 
setts of  negroes  from  other  states,^  no  legislation  defined  the 
status  of  colored  residents.  In  the  federal  census  of  1790,  how- 
ever, this  was  the  only  state  in  which  no  slaves  were  listed. 

Racial  antipathy  and  class  antagonism  among  the  whites  ap- 
pear to  have  contributed  to  this  result.  John  Adams  wrote  in 
1795,  with  some  exaggeration  and  incoherence:  "Argument 
might  have  [had]  some  weight  in  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  Mas-  1 
sachusetts,  but  the  real  cause  was  the  multiplication  of  labouring 
white  people,  who  would  no  longer  suffer  the  rich  to  employ 
(^these  sable  rivals  so  much  to  their  injury.  ...  If  the  gentlemen 
had  been  permitted  by  lawttrhold  slaves,  the  common  white  peo- 
ple would  have  put  the  negroes  to  death,  and  their  masters  too, 
perhaps.  .  .  .  The  common  white  people,  or  rather  the  labouring 
people,  were  the  cause  of  rendering  negroes  unprofitable  serv- 
ants. Their  scoffs  and  insults,  their  continual  insinuations,  filled 
the  negroes  with  discontent,  made  them  lazy,  idle,  proud,  vicious, 

*  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XLIII,  386. 

*  Moore,  pp.  227-229. 


I20  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  at  length  wholly  useless  to  their  masters,  to  such  a  degree 
that  the  abolition  of  slavery  became  a  measure  of  economy."  ^° 

Slavery  in  the  rest  of  the  Northern  states  was  as  a  rule  not 
abolished,  but  rather  put  in  process  of  gradual  extinction  by  leg- 
islation of  a  peculiar  sort  enacted  in  response  to  agitations  char- 
acteristic of  the  times.  Pennsylvania  set  the  pattern  in  an  act  of 
1780  providing  that  all  children  born  thereafter  of  slave  mothers 
in  the  state  were  to  be  the  servants  of  their  mothers'  owners  until 
reaching  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  and  then  to  become  free. 
Connecticut  followed  in  1784  with  an  act  of  similar  purport  but 
with  a  specification  of  twenty-five  years,  afterward  reduced  to 
twenty-one,  as  the  age  for  freedom;  and  in  1840  she  abolished 
her  remnant  of  slavery  outright.  In  Rhode  Island  an  act  of  the 
same  year,  1784,  enacted  that  the  children  thereafter  born  of 
slave  mothers  were  to  be  free  at  the  ages  of  twenty-one  for  males 
and  eighteen  for  females,  and  that  these  children  were  meanwhile 
to  be  supported  and  instructed  at  public  expense ;  but  an  amend- 
ment of  the  following  year  transferred  to  the  mothers'  owners 
the  burden  of  supporting  the  children,  and  ignored  the  matter  of 
their  education.  New  York  lagged  until  1799,  and  then  provided 
freedom  for  the  after-born  only  at  twenty-eight  and  twenty-five 
years  for  males  and  females  respectively;  but  a  further  act  of 
1817  set  the  Fourth  of  July  in  1827  as  a  time  for  the  emancipation 
for  all  remaining  slaves  in  the  state.  New  Jersey  fell  into  line 
last  of  all  by  an  act  of  1804  giving  freedom  to  the  after-born  at 
the  ages  of  twenty-five  for  males  and  twenty-one  for  females ; 
and  in  1846  she  converted  the  surviving  slaves  nominally  into  ap- 
prentices but  without  materially  changing  their  condition.  Sup- 
plementary legislation  here  and  there  in  these  states  bestowed 
freedom  upon  slaves  in  military  service,  restrained  the  import  and 
export  of  slaves,  and  forbade  the  citizens  to  ply  the  slave  trade 
by  land  or  sea.^^ 

^°  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XLIII,  402. 

"E.  R.  Turner,  The  Negro  in  Pennsylvania,  pp.  77-85;  B.  C.  Steiner, 
Slavery  in  Connecticut,  pp.  30-32 ;  Rhode  Island  Colonial  Records,  X,  13J, 
'^32;  A.  J.  Northrup,  "Slavery  in  New  York,"  in  the  New  York  State 
Library  Report  for  1900,  pp.  286-298;  H.  S.  Cooley,  "Slavery  in  New  Jer- 
sey" (Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies,  XIV,  nos.  9,  10),  pp.  47-So  F-  B. 
Lee,  New  Jersey  as  a  Colony  and  as  a  State  (New  York,  1912),  IV,  25-48. 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  121 

Thus  from  Pennsylvania  eastward  the  riddance  of  slavery  was 
procured  or  put  in  train,  generally  by  the  device  of  emancipating 
the  post  nati;  and  in  consequence  the  slave  population  in  that  quar- 
ter dwindled  before  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  a 
negligible  residue.  To  the  southward  the  tobacco  states,  whose 
industry  had  reached  a  somewhat  stationary  condition,  found  it 
a  simple  matter  to  prohibit  the  further  importation  of  slaves  from 
Africa,  Delaware  did  this  in  1776,  Virginia  in  1778,  Maryland 
in  1783  and  North  Carolina  in  1794.  But  in  these  common- 
wealths as  well  as  in  their  more  southerly  neighbors,  the  con- 
templation of  the  great  social  and  economic  problems  involved  in 
disestablishing  slavery  davinted  the  bulk  of  the  citizens  and  im- 
pelled their  representatives  to  conservatism.  The  advocacy  of 
abolition,  whether  sudden  or  gradual,  was  little  more  than  spo- 
radic. The  people  were  not  to  be  stampeded  in  the  cause  of  in- 
herent rights  or  any  other  abstract  philosophy.  It  was  a  condi- 
tion and  not  a  theory  which  confronted  them. 

In  Delaware,  however,  the  problem  was  hardly  formidable,  for 
at  the  time  of  the  first  federal  census  there  were  hardly  nine  thou- 
sand slaves  and  a  third  as  many  colored  freemen  in  her  gross 
population  of  some  sixty  thousand  souls.  Nevertheless  a  bill 
for  gradual  abolition  considered  by  the  legislature  in  1786  ap- 
pears not  to  have  been  brought  to  a  vote,^^  and  no  action  in  the 
premises  was  taken  thereafter.  The  retention  of  slavery  seems 
to  have  been  mainly  due  to  mere  public  inertia  and  to  the  pressure 
of  political  sympathy  with  the  more  distinctively  Southern  states. 
Because  of  her  border  position  and  her  dearth  of  plantation  in- 
dustry, the  slaves  in  Delaware  steadily  decreased  to  less  than 
eighteen  hundred  in  i860,  while  the  free  negroes  grew  to  more 
than  ten  times  as  many. 

In  Maryland  various  projects  for  abolition,  presented  by  the 
Quakers  between  1785  and  1791  and  supported  by  William  Pinck- 
ney  and  Charles  Carroll,  were  successively  defeated  in  the  legis- 
lature ;  and  efforts  to  remove  the  legal  restraints  on  private  manu- 

"  J.  R.  Brackett,  "The  Status  of  the  Slave,  T775-1789,"  in  J.  F.  Jameson 
ed..  Essays  in  the  Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States,  1775-17&9 
(Boston,  1889),  pp.  300-302. 


122  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

mission  were  likewise  thwarted.^^  These  restrictions,  which  ap- 
plied merely  to  the  freeing  of  slaves  above  middle  age,  were  in 
fact  very  slight.  The  manumissions  indeed  were  so  frequent 
and  the  conditions  of  life  in  Maryland  were  so  attractive  to  free 
negroes,  or  at  least  so  much  less  oppressive  than  in  most  other 
states,  that  while  the  slave  population  decreased  between  1790 
and  i860  from  103,036  to  87,189  souls  the  colored  freemen  multi- 
plied from  8046  to  83,942,  a  number  greater  by  twenty-five  thou- 
sand than  that  in  any  other  commonwealth. 

Thomas  Jefferson  wrote  in  1785  that  anti-slavery  men  were 
as  scarce  to  the  southward  of  Chesapeake  Bay  as  they  were  com- 
mon to  the  north  of  it,  while  in  Maryland,  and  still  more  in  Vir- 
ginia, the  bulk  of  the  people  approved  the  doctrine  and  a  respect- 
able minority  were  ready  to  adopt  it  in  practice,  "a  minority 
which  for  weight  and  worth  of  character  preponderates  against 
the  greater  number  who  have  not  the  courage  to  divest  their  fam- 
ilies of  a  property  which,  however,  keeps  their  conscience  un- 
quiet." Virginia,  he  continued,  "is  the  next  state  to  which  we 
may  turn  our  eyes  for  the  interesting  spectacle  of  justice  in  conflict 
with  avarice  and  oppression,  a  conflict  in  which  the  sacred  side  is 
gaining  daily  recruits  from  the  influx  into  office  of  young  men 
grown  and  growing  up.  These  have  sucked  in  the  principles  of 
liberty  as  it  we»-e  with  their  mother's  milk,  and  it  is  to  them  that 
I  look  with  anxiety  to  turn  the  fate  of  the  question."  ^*  Jeffer- 
son had  already  tried  to  raise  the  issue  by  having  a  committee  for 
revising  the  Virginia  laws,  appointed  in  1776  with  himself  a 
member,  frame  a  special  amendment  for  disestablishing  slavery. 
This  contemplated  a  gradual  emancipation  of  the  after-born  chil- 
dren, their  tutelage  by  the  state,  their  colonization  at  maturity, 
and  their  replacement  in  Virginia  by  white  immigrants.^^  But  a 
knowledge  that  such  a  project  would  raise  a  storm  caused  even 
its  framers  to  lay  it  aside.  The  abolition  of  primogeniture  and 
the  severance  of  church  from  state  absorbed  reformers'  energies 
at  the  expense  of  the  slavery  question. 

""J.  R.  Brackett,  The  Negro  in  Maryland  (Baltimore,  1899),  pp.  52-64, 
148-155- 

"  Jeflferson,  Writings,  P.  L.  Ford  ed.,  IV,  82-83. 
"Jefferson,  Notes  on  Virginia,  various  editions,  query  14. 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  123 

When  writing  his  Notes  on  Virginia  in  1781  Jefferson  de- 
nounced the  slaveholding  system  in  phrases  afterward  classic 
among  abolitionists:  "With  what  execration  should  the  states- 
man be  loaded  who,  permitting  one-half  of  the  citizens  thus  to 
trample  on  the  rights  of  the  other,  transforms  those  into  despots 
and  these  into  enemies.  .  .  .  And  can  the  liberties  of  a  nation  be 
thought  secure  when  we  have  removed  their  only  firm  basis,  a 
conviction  in  the  minds  of  the  people  that  these  liberties  are  the 
gift  of  God  ?  That  they  are  not  to  be  violated  but  with  his  wrath  ? 
Indeed  I  tremble  for  my  country  when  I  reflect  that  God  is  just; 
that  his  justice  cannot  sleep  forever."  ^^  In  the  course  of  the 
same  work,  however,  he  deprecated  abolition  unless  it  were  to  be 
accompanied"  with  deportation:  "Why  not  retain  and  incor- 
porate the  blacks  into  the  state  .  .  .  ?  Deep  rooted  prejudices 
entertained  by  the  whites,  ten  thousand  recollections  by  the 
blacks  of  the  injuries  they  have  sustained,  new  provocations,  the 
real  distinctions  which  nature  has  made,  and  many  other  circum- 
stances, will  divide  us  into  parties  and  produce  convulsions  which 
will  probably  never  end  but  in  the  extermination  of  the  one  or  the 
other  race.  .  .  .'This  unfortunate  difference  of  colour,  and  per- 
haps of  faculty,  is  a  powerful  obstacle  to  the  emancipation  of 
these  people.  iMany  of  their  advocates  while  they  wish  to  vindi- 
cate the  liberty  of  human  nature  are  anxious  also  to  preserve  its 
dignity  and  beauty.  Some  of  these,  embarrassed  by  the  ques- 
tion 'What  further  is  to  be  done  with  them?'  join  themselves  in 
opposition  with  those  who  are  actuated  by  sordid  avarice  only. 
Among  the  Romans,  emancipation  required  but  one  effort.  The 
slave  when  made  free  might  mix  without  staining  the  blood  of 
his  master.  But  with  us  a  second  is  necessary  unknown  to  his- 
tory. When  freed,  he  is  to  be  removed  beyond  the  reach  of  mix- 
ture." " 

George  Washington  wrote  in  1786  that  one  of  his  chief  wishes 
was  that  some  plan  might  be  adopted  "by  which  slavery  may  be 
abolished   by   slow,  sure   and  imperceptible  degrees."    But  he 

"JeflFerson,  Notes  on  Virginia,  query  18. 
"Ibid.,  query  14. 


124  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

noted  in  the  same  year  that  some  abolition  petitions  presented  to 
the  Virginia  legislature  had  barely  been  given  a  reading.^^ 

Seeking  to  revive  the  issue,  Judge  St.  George  Tucker,  profes- 
sor of  lav^  in  William  and  Mary  College,  inquired  of  leading 
citizens  of  Massachusetts  in  1795  for  data  and  advice,  and  un- 
daunted by  discouraging  reports  received  in  reply  or  by  the  spe- 
cific dissuasion  of  John  Adams,  he  framed  an  intricate  plan  for 
extremely  gradual  emancipation  and  for  expelling  the  freedrnen 
without  expense  to  the  state  by  merely  making  their  conditions 
of  life  unbearable.  This  was  presented  to  the  legislature  in  a 
pamphlet  of  1796  at  the  height  of  the  party  strife  between  the 
Federalists  and  Democratic-RepubHcans ;  and  it  was  impatiently 
dismissed  from  consideration.^^  Tucker,  still  nursing  his  project, 
reprinted  his  "dissertation"  as  an  appendix  to  his  edition  of 
Blackstone  in  1803,  where  the  people  and  the  politicians  let  it 
remain  buried.  In  public  opinion,  the  problem  as  to  the  freed- 
rnen remained  unsolved  and  insoluble. 

Meanwhile  the  Virginia  black  code  had  been  considerably  mod- 
erated during  and  after  the  Revolution ;  and  in  particular  the 
previous  almost  iron-clad  prohibition  of  private  manumission  had 
been  wholly  removed  in  effect  by  an  act  of  1782.  In  spite  of  re- 
strictions afterward  imposed  upon  manumission  and  upon  the 
residence  of  new  freedmen  in  the  state,  the  free  negroes  increased 
on  a  scale  comparable  to  that  in  Maryland.  As  compared  with 
an  estimate  of  less  than  two  thousand  in  1782,  there  were  12,866 
in  1790,  20,124  in  1800,  and  30,570  in  1810.  Thereafter  the 
number  advanced  more  slowly  until  it  reached  58,042,  about  one- 
eighth  as  many  as  the  slaves  numbered,  in  i860. 

In  the  more  southerly  states  condemnation  of  slavery  was  rare. 
Among  the  people  of  Georgia,  the  depressing  experience  of  the 
colony  under  a  prohibition  of  it  was  too  fresh  in  memory  for 
them  to  contemplate  with  favor  a  fresh  deprivation.  In  South 
Carolina  Christopher  Gadsden  had  written  in  1766  likening  slav- 

^*  Washington,  Writings,  W.  C.  Ford  ed.,  XI,  20,  62. 

"  St.  George  Tucker,  A  Dissertation  on  Slavery,  with  a  proposal  for 
the  gradual  abolition  of  it  in  the  State  of  Virginia  (Philadelphia,  1796, 
reprinted  New  York,  i860).  Tucker's  Massachusetts  correspondence  is 
printed  in  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections,  XLIII  (Bel- 
knap papers),  379-431- 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  125 

ery  to  a  crime,  and  a  decade  afterward  Henry  Laurens  wrote: 
"You  know,  my  dear  son,  I  abhor  slavery.  .  .  .  The  day,  I  hope 
is  approaching  when  from  principles  of  gratitude  as  well  as  jus- 
tice every  man  will  strive  to  be  foremost  in  showing  his  readiness 
to  comply  with  the  golden  rule.  Not  less  than  twenty  thousand 
pounds  sterling  would  all  my  negroes  produce  if  sold  at  public 
auction  tomorrow.  .  .  .  Nevertheless  I  am  devising  means  for 
manumitting  many  of  them,  and  for  cutting  off  the  entail  of 
slavery.  Great  powers  oppose  me — the  laws  and  customs  of  my 
country,  my  own  and  the  avarice  of  my  countrymen.  What  will 
my  children  say  if  I  deprive  them  of  so  much  estate?  These  are 
difficulties,  but  not  insuperable.  I  will  do  as  much  as  I  can  in 
my  time,  and  leave  the  rest  to  a  better  hand.  I  am  not  one  of 
those  .  .  .  who  dare  trust  in  Providence  for  defence  and  secur- 
ity of  their  own  liberty  while  they  enslave  and  wish  to  continue 
in  slavery  thousands  who  are  as  well  entitled  to  freedom  as  them- 
selves. I  perceive  the  work  before  me  is  great.  I  shall  appear 
to  many  as  a  promoter  not  only  of  strange  but  of  dangerous  doc- 
trines; it  will  therefore  be  necessary  to  proceed  with  cau- 
tion." 2"  Had  either  Gadsden  or  Laurens  entertained  thoughts  of 
launching  an  anti-slavery  campaign,  however,  the  palpable  hope- 
lessness of  such  a  project  in  their  community  must  have  dis- 
suaded them.  The  negroes  of  the  rice  coast  were  so  outnumber- 
ing and  so  crude  that  an  agitation  applying  the  doctrine  of  inher- 
ent liberty  and  equality  to  them  could  only  have  had  the  effect  of 
discrediting  the  doctrine  itself.  Furthermore,  the  industrial  pios- 
pect,  the  swamps  and  forests  calling  for  conversion  into  prosper- 
ous plantations,  suggested  an  increase  rather  than  a  diminution  of 
the  slave  labor  supply.  Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  in  fact,  were 
more  inclined  to  keep  open  the  African  slave  trade  than  to  relin- 
quish control  of  the  negro  populations  Revolutionary  liberalism 
had  but  the  slightest  of  echoes  there. 

"Frank  Moore  ed.,  Correspondence  of  Henry  Laurens  (New  York, 
1861),  pp.  20,  21.  The  version  of  this  letter  given  by  Professor  Wallace 
in  his  Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  p.  446,  which  varies  from  the  present  one, 
was  derived  from  a  paraphrase  by  John  Laurens  to  whom  the  original  was 
written.  Cf.  South  Carolina  Historical  and  Genealogical  Magazine,  X.  49. 
For  related  items  in  the  Laurens  correspondence  see  D.  D.  Wallace,  Life 
of  Henry  Laurens,  pp.  445,  447-455. 


126  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

In  North  Carolina  the  prevailing  lack  of  enterprise  in  puolic 
affairs  had  no  exception  in  regard  to  slavery.  The  Quakers 
alone  condemned  it.  When  in  1797  Nathaniel  Macon,  a  pro- 
nounced individualist  and  the  chief  spokesman  of  his  state  in 
Congress,  discussed  the  general  subject  he  said  "there  was  not  a 
gentleman  in  North  Carolina  who  did  not  wish  there  were  no 
blacks  in  the  country.  It  was  a  misfortune — he  considered  it  a 
curse ;  but  there  was  no  way  of  getting  rid  of  them."  Macon  put 
his  emphasis  upon  the  negro  problem  rather  than  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery,  and  in  so  doing  he  doubtless  reflected  the  thought 
of  his  community.^^  The  legislation  of  North  Carolina  regard- 
ing racial  control,  like  that  of  the  period  in  South  Carolina,  Geor- 
gia, Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  was  more  conservative  than  liberal. 

The  central  government  of  the  United  States  during  the  Revo- 
lution and  the  Confederation  was  little  concerned  with  slavery 
problems  except  in  its  diplomatic  affairs,  where  the  question  was 
merely  the  adjustment  of  property  in  slaves,  and  except  in  re- 
gard to  the  western  territories.  Proposals  for  the  prohibition  of 
slavery  in  these  wilderness  regions  were  included  in  the  first 
projects  for  establishing  governments  in  them.  Timothy  Pick- 
ering and  certain  military  colleagues  framed  a  plan  in  1780  for 
a  state  beyond  the  Ohio  River  with  slavery  excluded ;  but  it  was 
allowed  to  drop  out  of  consideration.  In  the  next  year  an  ordi- 
nance drafted  by  Jefferson  was  introduced  into  Congress  for 
erecting  territorial  governments  over  the  whole  area  ceded  or  to 
be  ceded  by  the  states,  from  the  Alleghanies  to  the  Mississippi 
and  from  Canada  to  West  Florida ;  and  one  of  its  features  was  a 
prohibition  of  slavery  after  the  year  1800  throughout  the  region 
concerned.  Under  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  the  Congress 
could  enact  legislation  only  by  the  affirmative  votes  of  seven  state 
delegations.     When   the   ballot   was   taken   on   the   anti-slavery 

*^  Annals  of  Congress,  VII,  661.  American  historians,  through  preoccu- 
pation or  inadvertence,  have  often  confused  anti-negro  v^rith  anti-slavery 
expressions.  In  reciting  the  speech  of  Macon  here  quoted  McMaster  has 
replaced  "blacks"  with  "slaves" ;  and  incidentally  he  has  made  the  whole 
discussion  apply  to  Georgia  instead  of  North  Carolina.  Rhodes  in  turn 
has  implicitly  followed  McMaster  in  both  errors.  J.  B.  McMaster,  History 
of  the  People  of  the  United  States,  II,  359;  J.  F.  Rhodes,  History  of  the 
United  States,  I,  19. 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  127 

clause  the  six  states  from  Pennsylvania  eastward  voted  aye : 
Maryland,  Virginia  and  South  Carolina  voted  no;  and  the  other 
states  were  absent.  Jefferson  was  not  alone  in  feeling  chagrin  at 
the  defeat  and  in  resolving  to  persevere.  Pickering  expressed  his 
own  views  in  a  letter  to  Rufus  King :  "To  suffer  the  continuance 
of  slaves  till  they  can  be  gradually  emancipated,  in  states  already 
overrun  with  them,  may  be  pardonable  because  unavoidable  with- 
out hazarding  greater  evils ;  but  to  introduce  them  into  countries 
where  none  already  exist  .  .  .  can  never  be  forgiven."  King 
in  his  turn  introduced  a  resolution  virtually  restoring  the  stricken 
clause,  but  was  unable  to  bring  it  to  a  vote.  After  being  vari- 
ously amended,  the  ordinance  without  this  clause  was  adopted. 
It  was,  however,  temporary  in  its  provision  and  ineffectual  in  char- 
acter; and  soon  the  drafting  of  one  adequate  for  permanent  pur- 
poses was  begun.  The  adoption  of  this  was  hastened  in  July, 
1787,  by  the  offer  of  a  New  England  company  to  buy  from 
Congress  a  huge  tract  of  Ohio  land.  When  the  bill  was  put  to 
the  final  vote  it  was  supported  by  every  member  with  the  sole 
exception  of  the  New  Yorker,  Abraham  Yates.  Delegations  from 
all  of  the  Southern  states  but  Maryland  were  present,  and  all  of 
them  voted  aye.  Its  enactment  gave  to  the  country  a  basic  law 
for  the  territories  in  phrasing  and  in  substance  comparable  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Federal  Constitution. 
Applying  only  to  the  region  north  of  the  Ohio  River,  the  ordi- 
nance provided  for  the  erection  of  territories  later  to  be  admitted 
as  states,  guaranteed  in  republican  government,  secured  in  the 
freedom  of  religion,  jury  trial  and  all  concomitant  rights,  en- 
dowed with  public  land  for  the  support  of  schools  and  universi- 
ties, and  while  obligated  to  render  fugitive  slaves  on  claim  of 
their  masters  in  the  original  states,  shut  out  from  the  regime  of 
slaveholding  itself,  ^^  "There  shall  be  neither  slavery  nor  in- 
voluntary servitude  in  the  said  territory,"  it  prescribed,  "other- 
wise than  in  punishment   of   crimes  whereof   the   party   shall 

"A.  C.  McLaughlin,  The  Confederation  and  the  Constitution  (New 
York  [1905],  chap.  7;  B.  A.  Hinsdale,  The  Old  Northwest  (New  York, 
1888),  chap.  15. 


128  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

have  been  duly  convicted."  The  first  Congress  under  the  new 
constitution  reenacted  the  ordinance,  which  was  the  first  and 
last  antislavery  achievement  by  the  central  government  in  the 
period.  V;' 

By  this  time  radicalism  in  general  had  spent  much  of  its  force. 
The  excessive  stress  which  the  Revolution  had  laid  upon  the  lib- 
erty of  individuals  had  threatened  for  a  time  to  break  the  com- 
munity's grasp  upon  the  essentials  of  order  and  self-restraint. 
Social  conventions  of  many  sorts  were  flouted;  local  factions  re- 
sorted to  terrorism  against  their  opponents;  legislatures  abused 
their  power  by  confiscating  loyalist  property  and  enacting  laws 
for  the  dishonest  promotion  of  debtor-class  interests,  and  the  cen- 
tral government,  made  pitiably  weak  by  the  prevailing  jealousy  of 
control,  was  kept  wholly  incompetent  through  the  shirking  of 
burdens  by  states  pledged  to  its  financial  support.  But  popuhsm 
and  particularism  brought  their  own  cure.  The  paralysis  of 
government  now  enabled  sober  statesmen  to  point  the  prospect  of 
ruin  through  chaos  and  get  a  hearing  in  their  advocacy  of  sound 
system.  Exalted  theorising  on  the  principles  of  liberty  had 
merely  destroyed  the  old  regime :  matter-of-fact  reckoning  on 
principles  of  law  and  responsibility  must  build  the  new.  The 
plan  of  organization,  furthermore,  must  be  enough  in  keeping 
with  the  popular  will  to  procure  a  general  ratification. 

Negro  slavery  in  the  colonial  period  had  been  of  continental 
extent  but  under  local  control.  At  the  close  of  the  Revolution, 
as  we  have  seen,  its  area  began  to  be  sectionally  confined  while 
the  jurisdiction  over  it  continued  to  lie  in  the  several  state  gov- 
ernments. The  great  convention  at  Philadelphia  in  1787  might 
conceivably  have  undertaken  the  transfer  of  authority  over  the 
whole  matter  to  the  central  government;  but  on  the  one  hand 
the  beginnings  of  sectional  jealousy  made  the  subject  a  delicate 
one,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  members  were  glad  enough  to  lay 
aside  all  problems  not  regarded  as  essential  in  their  main  task. 
Conscious  ignorance  by  even  the  best  informed  delegates  from 
one  section  as  to  affairs  in  another  was  a  dissuasion  from  the 
centralizing  of  doubtful  issues;  and  the  secrecy  of  the  conven- 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  129 

tion's  proceedings  exempted  it  from  any  pressure  of  anti-slavery 
sentiment  from  outside. 

On  the  whole  the  permanence  of  any  critical  problem  in  the 
premises  was  discredited.  Roger  Sherman  of  Connecticut  "ob- 
served that  the  abolition  of  slavery  seemed  to  be  going  on  in  the 
United  States,  and  that  the  good  sense  of  the  people  of  the 
several  states  would  by  degrees  compleat  it."  His  colleague 
Oliver  Ellsworth  said,  "The  morality  or  wisdom  of  slavery  are 
considerations  belonging  to  the  states  themselves";  and  again, 
"Let  us  not  intermeddle.  As  population  increases  poor  laborers 
will  be  so  plenty  as  to  render  slaves  useless.  Slavery  in  time 
will  not  be  a  speck  in  our  country."  And  Elbridge  Gerry  of 
Massachusetts  "thought  we  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  conduct 
of  states  as  to  slaves,  but  ought  to  be  careful  not  to  give  any 
sanction  to  it."  The  agreement  was  general  that  the  convention 
keep  its  hands  off  so  far  as  might  be;  but  positive  action  was 
required  upon  incidental  phases  which  involved  some  degree 
of  sanction  for  the  institution  itself.  These  issues  concerned  the 
apportionment  of  representation,  the  regulation  of  the  African 
trade,  and  the  rendition  of  fugitives.  This  last  was  readily 
adjusted  by  the  unanimous  adoption  of  a  clause  introduced  by 
Pierce  Butler  of  South  Carolina  and  afterward  changed  in  its 
phrasing  to  read :  "No  person  held  to  service  or  labour  in  one 
state  under  the  laws  thereof  escaping  into  another  shall  in 
consequence  of  any  law  or  regulation  therein  be  discharged  from 
such  service  or  labour,  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on  claim  of  the 
party  to  whom  such  service  or  labour  may  be  due."  After  some 
jockeying,  the  other  two  questions  were  settled  by  compromise. 
Representation  in  the  lower  house  of  Congress  was  apportioned 
among  the  states  "according  to  their  several  members,  which 
shall  be  determined  by  adding  to  the  whole  number  of  free 
persons  .  .  .  three  fifths  of  all  other  persons."  As  to  the  foreign 
slave  trade,  Congress  was  forbidden  to  prohibit  it  prior  to  the 
year  1808,  and  was  merely  permitted  meanwhile  to  levy  an  import 
duty  upon  slaves  at  a  rate  of  not  more  than  ten  dollars  each.^^ 

^'Max  Far  rand  ed.,  The  Records  of  the  Federal  Convention  (New 
Haven,  1911),  passim. 


I30  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

In  the  state  conventions  to  which  the  Constitution  was  referred 
for  ratification  the  debates  bore  out  a  remark  of  Madison's  at 
Philadelphia  that  the  real  difference  of  interests  lay  not  between 
the  large  and  small  states  but  between  those  within  and  without 
the  slaveholding  influence^  The  opponents  of  the  Constitution  at 
the  North  censured  it  as  a  pro-slavery  instrument,  while  its  ad- 
vocates apologized  for  its  pertinent  clauses  on  the  ground  that 
nothing  more  hostile  to  the  institution  could  have  been  carried 
and  that  if  the  Constitution  were  rejected  there  would  be  no 
prospect  of  a  federal  stoppage  of  importations  at  any  time.  -  But 
at  the  South  the  opposition,  except  in  Maryland  and  Virginia 
where  the  continuance  of  the  African  trade  was  deprecated, 
declared  the  slavery  concessions  inadequate,  while  the  champions 
of  the  Constitution  maintained  that  the  utmost  practicable  ad- 
vantages for  their  sectional  interest  had  been  achieved. ,' Among 
the  many  amendments  to  the  Constitution  proposed  by  the  ratify- 
ing conventions  the  only  one  dealing  with  any  phase  of  slavery 
was  offered,  strange  to  say,  by  Rhode  Island,  whose  inhabitants 
had  been  and  still  were  so  active  in  the  African  trade.  It  reads : 
"As  a  traffic  tending  to  establish  and  continue  the  slavery  of  the 
human  species  is  disgraceful  to  the  cause  of  liberty  and  humanity, 
Congress  shall  as  soon  as  may  be  promote  and  estabHsh  such  laws 
as  may  effectually  prevent  the  importation  of  slaves  of  every 
description."  ^*  The  proposal  seems  to  have  received  no  further 
attention  at  the  time. 

In  the  early  sessions  of  Congress  under  the  new  Constitution 
most  of  the  few  debates  on  slavery  topics  arose  incidentally  and 
ended  without  positive  action.  The  taxation  of  slave  imports  was 
proposed  in  1789,  but  was  never  enacted :  sundry  petitions  of  anti- 
slavery  tenor,  presented  mostly  by  Quakers,  were  given  brief 
consideration  in  1790  and  again  at  the  close  of  the  century  but 
with  no  favorable  results;  and  when,  in  1797,  a  more  concrete 
issue  was  raised  by  memorials  asking  intervention  on  behalf  of 
some  negroes  whom  Quakers  had  manumitted  in  North  Carolina 
in  disregard  of  legal  restraints  and  who  had  again  been  reduced 

"*  This  was  dated  May  29,  1790.  H.  V.  Ames,  "Proposed  Amendment  to 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,"  in  the  American  Historical  As- 
sociation Report  for  1896,  p.  208 


REVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  131 

to  slavery,  a  committee  reported  that  the  matter  fell  within  the 
scope  of  judicial  cognizance  alone,  and  the  House  dismissed  the 
subject.  For  more  than  a  decade,  indeed,  the  only  legislation 
enacted  by  Congress  concerned  at  all  with  slavery  was  the  act  of 
1793  empowering  the  master  of  an  interstate  fugitive  to  seize  him 
wherever  found,  carry  him  before  any  federal  or  state  magis- 
trate in  the  vicinage,  and  procure  a  certificate  warranting  his 
removal  to  the  state  from  which  he  had  fled.  Proposals  to  sup- 
plement this  rendition  act  on  the  one  hand  by  safeguarding  free 
negroes  from  being  kidnapped  under  fraudulent  claims  and  on 
the  other  hand  by  requiring  employers  of  strange  negroes  to 
publish  descriptions  of  them  and  thus  facilitate  the  recovery  of 
runaways,  were  each  defeated  in  the  House. 

On  the  whole  the  glamor  of  revolutionary  doctrines  was  pass- 
ing, and  self  interest  was  regaining  its  wonted  supremacy.  While 
the  rising  cotton  industry  was  giving  the  blacks  in  the  South  new 
value  as  slaves.  Northern  spokesmen  were  frankly  stating  an 
antipathy  of  their  people  toward  negroes  in  any  capacity  what- 
ever. ^°  The  succession  of  disasters  in  San  Domingo,  meanwhile, 
gave  warning  against  the  upsetting  of  racial  adjustments  in  the 
black  belts,  and  the  Gabriel  revolt  of  1800  in  Virginia  drove  the 
lesson  home.  On  slavery  questions  for  a  period  of  several 
decades  the  policy  of  each  of  the  two  sections  was  merely  to  pre- 
vent itself  from  being  overreached.  The  conservative  trend, 
however,  could  not  wholly  remove  the  Revolution's  impress  of 
philosophical  liberalism  from  the  minds  of  men.  Slavery  was 
always  a  thing  of  appreciable  disrelish  in  many  quarters;  and 
the  slave  trade  especially,  whether  foreign  or  domestic,  bore  a 
permanent  stigma. 

"£.  g.,  Annals  of  Congress,  1799- 1801,  pp.  230-246. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  SLAVE  TRADE 

THE  many  attempts  of  the  several  colonies  to  restrict  or 
prohibit  the  importation  of  slaves  were  uniformly 
thwarted,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  British  government. 
The  desire  for  prohibition,  however,  had  been  far  from  constant 
or  universal.^  The  first  Continental  Congress  when  declaring  the 
Association,  on  October  1 8,  1774,  resolved:  "We  will  neither 
import,  nor  purchase  any  slave  imported,  after  the  first  day  of 
December  next;  after  which  time  we  will  wholly  discontinue  the 
slave  trade,  and  will  neither  be  concerned  in  it  ourselves  nor  will 
we  hire  our  vessels  nor  sell  our  commodities  or  manufactures  to 
those  who  are  concerned  in  it."  ^  But  even  this  was  mainly  a 
political  stroke  against  the  British  government;  and  the  general 
efifect  of  the  restraint  lasted  not  more  than  two  or  three 
years.^  The  ensuing  war,  of  course,  hampered  the  trade,  and  the 
legislatures  of  several  Northern  states,  along  with  Delaware  and 
Virginia,  took  occasion  to  prohibit  slave  importations.  The  re- 
turn of  peace,  although  followed  by  industrial  depression,  re- 
vived the  demand  for  slave  labor.  Nevertheless,  Maryland  pro- 
hibited the  import  by  an  act  of  1783 ;  North  Carolina  laid 
a  prohibitive  duty  in  1787;  and  South  Carolina  in  the  spring 
of  that  year  enacted  the  first  of  a  series  of  temporary  laws  which 
maintained  a  continuous  prohibition  for  sixteen  years.  Thus  at 
the  time  when  the  framers  of  the  Federal  Constitution  were 
stopping  congressional  action  for  twenty  years,  the  trade  was 
legitimate  only  in  a  few  of  the  Northern  states,  all  of  which  soon 

*  The  slave  trade  enactments  by  the  colonies,  the  states  and  the  federal 
government  are  listed  and  summarized  in  W  E.  B.  DuBois,  The  Suppres- 
sion of  the  African  Slave  Trade  to  the  United  States,  1638-1870  (New 
York,   1904),  appendices. 

*W.  C.  Ford,  ed.,  Journals  of  the  Continental  Congress  (Washington, 

1904),  I,  75,  77- 
'DuBois,  pp.  44-48. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       133 

enacted  prohibitions,  and  in  Georgia  alone  at  the  South.  The 
San  Domingan  cataclysm  prompted  the  Georgia  legislature  in 
an  act  of  December  19,  1793,  to  forbid  the  importation  of  slaves 
from  the  West  Indies,  the  Bahamas  and  Florida,  as  well  as  to 
require  free  negroes  to  procure  magisterial  certificates  of  in- 
dustriousness  and  probity.*  The  African  trade  was  left  open  by 
that  state  until  1798,  when  it  was  closed  both  by  legislative  enact- 
ment and  by  constitutional  provision. 

The  scale  of  the  importation  in  the  period  when  Georgia  alone 
permitted  them  appears  to  have  been  small.  For  the  year  1796, 
for  example,  the  imports  at  Savannah  were  officially  reported 
at  2084,  including  some  who  had  been  brought  coastwise  from  the 
northward  for  sale.'^  A  foreign  traveler  who  visited  Savannah 
in  the  period  noted  that  the  demand  was  light  because  of  the 
dearth  of  money  and  credit,  that  the  prices  were  about  three 
hundred  dollars  per  head,  that  the  carriers  were  mainly  from 
New  England,  and  that  one  third  of  each  year's  imports  were 
generally  smuggled  into  South  Carolina.*  , 

In  the  impulse  toward  the  prohibitory  acts  the  humanitarian 
motive  was  obvious  but  not  isolated.  At  the  North  it  was  sup- 
plemented, often  in  the  same  breasts,  by  the  inhumane  feeling 
of  personal  repugnance  toward  negroes.  The  anti-slave-trade 
agitation  in  England  also  had  a  contributing  influence ;  and  there 
were  no  economic  interests  opposing  the  exclusion.  At  the  South 
racial  repugnance  was  fainter,  and  humanitarianism  though  of 
positive  weight  was  but  one  of  several  factors.  The  distinctively 
Southern  considerations  against  the  trade  were  that  its  continu- 
ance would  lower  the  prices  of  slaves  already  on  hand,  or  at  least 
prevent  those  prices  from  rising;  that  it  would  so  increase  the 
staple  exports  as  to  spoil  the  world's  market  for  them;  that  it 
would  drain  out  money  and  keep  the  community  in  debt;  that  it 
would  retard  the  civilization  of  the  negroes  already  on  hand ;  and 
that  by  raising  the  proportion  of  blacks  in  the  population  it  would 

*  The  text  of  the  act,  which  appears  never  to  have  been  printed,  is  in  the 
Georgia  archives.  For  a  transcript  I  am  indebted  to  the  Hon.  Philip  Cook, 
Secretary  of  State  of  Georgia. 

'American  Historical  Association  Report  for  1903,  pp.  459,  460. 

•  LaRochef oucauld-Liancourt,  Travels  in  the  United  States  (London 
1799).  P-  60s. 


134  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

intensify  the  danger  of  slave  insurrections.  The  several  argu- 
ments had  varying  degrees  of  influence  in  the  several  areas.  In 
the  older  settlements  where  the  planters  had  relaxed  into  easy- 
going comfort,  the  fear  of  revolt  was  keenest;  in  the  newer 
districts  the  settlers  were  more  confident  in  their  own  alertness. 
Again,  where  prosperity  was  declining  the  planters  were  fairly 
sure  to  favor  anything  calculated  to  raise  the  prices  of  slaves 
which  they  might  wish  in  future  to  sell,  while  on  the  other  hand 
the  people  in  districts  of  rising  industry  were  tempted  by  pro- 
grammes tending  to  cheapen  the  labor  they  needed. 

The  arguments  used  in  South  Carolina  for  and  against  exclu- 
sion may  be  gathered  from  scattering  reports  in  the  newspapers. 
In  September,  1785,  the  lower  house  of  the  legislature  upon  re- 
ceiving a  message  from  the  governor  on  the  distressing  condition 
of  commerce  and  credit,  appointed  a  committee  of  fifteen  on  the 
state  of  the  republic.  In  this  committee  there  was  a  vigorous 
debate  on  a  motion  by  Ralph  Izard  to  report  a  bill  prohibiting 
slave  importations  for  three  years.  John  Rutledge  opposed  it. 
Since  the  peace  with  Great  Britain,  said  he,  not  more  than  seven 
thousand  slaves  had  been  imported,  which  at  £$0  each  would  be 
trifling  as  a  cause  of  the  existing  stringency ;  and  the  closing 
of  the  ports  would  therefore  fail  to  relieve  the  distress  ''  Thomas 
Pinckney  supported  Rutledge  with  an  argument  that  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  trade  from  Charleston  would  at  once  drive  commerce 
in  general  to  the  ports  of  Georgia  and  North  Carolina,  and  that 
the  advantage  of  low  prices,  which  he  said  had  fallen  from  a  level 
of  £go  in  1783,  would  be  lost  to  the  planters.  Judge  Pendleton, 
on  the  other  hand,  stressed  the  need  of  retrenchment.  Planters, 
he  said,  no  longer  enjoyed  the  long  loans  which  in  colonial  times 
had  protected  them  from  distress;  and  the  short  credits  now 
alone  available  put  borrowers  in  peril  of  bankruptcy  from  a  single 
season  of  short  crops  and  low  prices.®  The  committee  reported 
Izard's  bill ;  but  it  was  defeated  in  the  House  by  a  vote  of  47  to 
51,  and  an  act  was  passed  instead  for  an  emission  of  bills  of 
credit  by  the  state.    The  advocacy  of  the  trade  by  Thomas  Pinck- 

'  Charleston  Evening  Gazette,  Sept.  26  and  28,  1785. 
'Ibid.,  Oct.  I,  1785. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       135 

ney  indicates  that  at  this  time  there  was  no  unanimity  of  con- 
servatives against  it. 

When  two  years  later  the  stringency  persisted,  the  radicals  in 
the  legislature  demanded  a  law  to  stay  the  execution  of  debts, 
while  the  now  unified  conservatives  proposed  again  the  stoppage 
of  the  slave  trade.  In  the  course  of  the  debate  David  Ramsay 
"made  a  jocose  remark  that  every  man  who  went  to  church 
last  Sunday  and  said  his  prayers  was  bound  by  a  spiritual  obliga- 
tion to  refuse  the  importation  of  slaves.  They  had  devoutly 
prayed  not  to  be  led  into  temptation,  and  negroes  were  a  temp- 
tation too  great  to  be  resisted."  ^  The  issue  was  at  length  ad- 
justed by  combining  the  two  projects  of  a  stay-law  and  a  pro- 
hibition of  slave  importations  for  three  years  in  a  single  bill. 
This  was  approved  on  March  28,  1787;  and  a  further  act  of  the 
same  day  added  a  penalty  of  fine  to  that  of  forfeiture  for  the 
illegal  introduction  of  slaves.  The  exclusion  applied  to  slaves 
from  every  source,  except  those  whose  masters  should  bring  them 
when  entering  the  state  as  residents.^" 

Early  in  the  next  year  an  attempt  was  made  to  repeal  the 
prohibition.  Its  leading  advocate  was  Alexander  Gillon,  a  popu- 
listic  Charleston  merchant  who  had  been  made  a  commodore  by 
the  State  of  South  Carolina  but  had  never  sailed  a  ship.  The 
opposition  was  voiced  so  vigorously  by  Edward  Rutledge,  Charles 
Pinckney,  Chancellor  Matthews,  Dr.  Ramsay,  Mr.  Lowndes,  and 
others  that  the  project  was  crushed  by  93  votes  to  40.  The 
strongest  weapon  in  the  hands  of  its  opponents  appears  to  have 
been  a  threat  of  repealing  the  stay-law  in  retaliation.^^  At  the 
end  of  the  year  the  prohibitory  act  had  its  life  prolonged  until  the 
beginning  of  1793;  and  continuation  acts  adopted  every  two  or 
three  years  thereafter  extended  the  regime  until  the  end  of  1803. 
The  constitutionality  of  the  prohibition  was  tested  before  the 
judiciary  of  the  state  in  January,  1802,  when  the  five  assembled 
judges  unanimously  pronounced  it  valid.^^ 

'Charleston  Morning  Post,  March  23,  1787. 

^"Ibid.,  March  29,  1787;  Cooper  and  McCord,  Statutes  at  Large  of 
South  Carolina,  VII,  430. 

^Georgia  State  Gazette  (Savannah),  Feb.  17,  1788. 
"Augusta,  Ga.,  Chronicle,  Jan.  30,  1802. 


136  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

But  at  last  the  advocates  of  the  open  trade  had  their  innings. 
The  governor  in  a  message  of  November  24,  1803,  recited  that 
his  best  exertions  to  enforce  the  law  had  been  of  no  avail.  In- 
habitants of  the  coast  and  the  frontier,  said  he,  were  smuggling 
in  slaves  abundantly,  while  the  people  of  the  central  districts  were 
suffering  an  unfair  competition  in  having  to  pay  high  prices  for 
their  labor.  He  mentioned  a  recently  enacted  law  of  Congress 
reinforcing  the  prohibitory  acts  of  the  several  states  only  to 
pronounce  it  already  nullified  by  the  absence  of  public  sanction; 
and  he  dismissed  any  thought  of  providing  the  emancipation  of 
smuggled  slaves  as  "a  remedy  more  mischievous  than  their  intro- 
duction in  servitude."  ^^  Having  thus  described  the  problem  as 
insoluble  by  prohibitions,  he  left  the  solution  to  the  legislature. 

In  spite  of  the  governor's  assertion,  supported  soon  afterward 
by  a  statement  of  William  Lowndes  in  Congress,^*  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that  violations  of  the  law  had  not  been  committed  on 
a  great  scale.  Slave  prices  could  not  have  become  nearly  doubled, 
as  they  did  during  the  period  of  legal  prohibition,  if  African 
imports  had  been  at  all  freely  made.  The  governor  may  quite 
possibly  have  exaggerated  the  facts  with  a  view  to  bringing  the 
system  of  exclusion  to  an  end. 

However  this  -may  have  been,  a  bill  was  promptly  introduced  in 
the  Senate  to  repeal  all  acts  against  importations.  Mr.  Barnwell 
opposed  this  on  the  ground  that  the  immense  influx  of  slaves 
which  might  be  expected  in  consequence  would  cut  in  half  the 
value  of  slave  property,  and  that  the  increase  in  the  cotton  out- 
put would  lower  the  already  falling  f^rjces  of  cotton  to  disastrous 
levels.  The  resumption  of  the  great  war  in  Europe,  said  he,  had 
already  diminished  the  supply  of  manufactured  goods  and  raised 
their  prices.  "Was  it  under  these  circumstances  that  we  ought  to 
lay  out  the  savings  of  our  industry,  the  funds  accumulated  in 
many  years  of  prosperity  and  peace,  to  increase  that  produce 
whose  value  had  already  fallen  so  much?  He  thought  not.  The 
permission  given  by  the  bill  would  lead  to  ruinous  speculations. 
Everyone  would  purchase  negroes.    It  was  well  known  that  those 

"  Charleston  Courier,  Dec.  5,  1803. 
"Annals  of  Congress,  1803-1804,  p.  992. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       137 

who  dealt  in  this  property  would  sell  it  at  a  very  long  credit. 
Our  citizens  would  purchase  at  all  hazards  and  trust  to  fortunate 
crops  and  favorable  markets  for  making  their  payments ;  and  it 
would  be  found  that  South  Carolina  would  in  a  few  years,  if  this 
trade  continued  open,  be  in  the  same  situation  of  debt,  and  sub- 
ject to  all  misfortunes  which  that  situation  had  produced,  as  at 
the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war."  The  newspaper  closed 
its  report  of  the  speech  by  a  concealment  of  its  further  burden : 
"The  Hon.  member  adduced  in  support  of  his  opinion  various 
other  arguments,  still  more  cogent  and  impressive,  which  from 
reasons  very  obvious  we  decline  making  public."^^  It  may  be 
surmised  that  the  suppressed  remarks  dealt  with  the  danger  of 
slave  revolts.  In  the  further  course  of  the  debate,  "Mr.  Smith 
said  he  would  agree  to  put  a  stop  to  the  importation  of  slaves, 
but  he  believed  it  impossible.  For  this  reason  he  would  vote 
for  the  bill."    The  measure  soon  passed  the  Senate. 

Meanwhile  the  lower  house  had  resolved  on  December  8,  in 
committee  of  the  whole,  "that  the  laws  prohibiting  the  impor- 
tation of  negroes  and  other  persons  of  colour  in  this  state  can 
be  so  amended  as  to  prevent  their  introduction  amongst  us,"  and 
had  recommended  that  a  select  committee  be  appointed  to  draft  a 
bill  accordingly.^^  Within  the  following  week,  however,  the 
sentiment  of  the  House  was  swung  to  the  policy  of  repeal,  and 
the  Senate  bill  was  passed.  On  the  test  vote  the  ayes  were  55 
and  the  noes  46.^''  The  act  continued  the  exclusion  of  West 
Indian  negroes,  and  provided  that  slaves  brought  in  from  sister 
states  of  the  Union  must  have  official  certificates  of  good  char- 
acter; but  as  to  the  African  trade  it  removed  all  restrictions.  In 
1805  a  bill  to  prohibit  imports  again  was  introduced  into  the 
legislature,  but  after  debate  it  was  defeated.^® 

The  local  effect  of  the  repeal  is  indicated  in  the  experience  of 
E.  S.  Thomas,  a  Charleston  bookseller  of  the  time  who  in  high 
prosperity  had  just  opened  a  new  importation  of  fifty  thousand 

"  Charleston  Courier,  Dec.  26,  1803. 
^"Ibid.,  Dec.  20,  1803. 
"  Charleston  City  Gazette,  Dec.  22,  1803. 

"  "Diary  of  Edward  Hooker"  in  the  American  Historical  Association 
Report  for  1896,  p.  878. 


138  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

volumes.  As  he  wrote  in  after  years,  the  news  that  the  legisla- 
ture had  reopened  the  slave  trade  "had  not  been  five  hours  in  the 
city,  before  two  large  British  Guineamen,  that  had  been  lying 
on  and  off  the  port  for  several  days  expecting  it,  came  up  to 
town;  and  from  that  day  my  business  began  to  decline.  ...  A 
great  change  at  once  took  place  in  everything.  Vessels  were 
fitted  out  in  numbers  for  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  as  fast  as  they 
returned  their  cargoes  were  bought  up  with  avidity,  not  only 
consuming  the  large  funds  that  had  been  accumulating,  but  all 
that  could  be  procured,  and  finally  exhausting  credit  and  mortgag- 
ing the  slaves  for  payment.  .  .  .  For  myself,  I  was  upwards 
of  five  years  disposing  of  my  large  stock,  at  a  sacrifice  of  more 
than  a  half,  in  all  the  principal  towns  from  Augusta  in  Georgia 
to  Boston."  i» 

As  reported  at  the  end  of  the  period,  the  importations  amounted 
to  5386  slaves  in  1804;  6790  in  1805;  11458  in  1806;  and  15,676 
in  1807.^"  Senator  William  Smith  of  South  Carolina  upon  ex- 
amining the  records  at  a  later  time  placed  the  total  at  39,310,  and 
analysed  the  statistics  as  follows :  slaves  brought  by  British  ves- 
sels, 19,449;  by  French  vessels,  1078;  by  American  vessels,  oper- 
ated mostly  for  the  account  of  Rhode  Islanders  and  foreigners, 
18,048.^^  If  an  influx  no  greater  than  this  could  produce  the 
effect  which  Thomas  described,  notwithstanding  that  many  of 
the  slaves  were  immediately  reshipped  to  New  Orleans  and  many 
more  were  almost  as  promptly  sold  into  the  distant  interior,  the 
scale  of  the  preceding  illicit  trade  must  have  been  far  less  than 
the  official  statements  and  the  apologies  in  Congress  would 
indicate. 

South  Carolina's  opening  of  the  trade  promptly  spread  dismay 
in  other  states.  The  North  Carolina  legislature,  by  a  vote  after- 
wards described  as  virtually  unanimous  in  both  houses,  adopted 
resolutions  in  December,  1804,  instructing  the  Senators  from 
North  Carolina  and  requesting  her  Congressmen  to  use  their 
utmost  exertions   at  the  earliest  possible  time  to  procure   an 

"  E.  S.  Thomas,  Reminiscences,  IT,  35,  36. 

**  Virginia  Argus,  Jan.  19,  1808. 

'^  Amials  of  Congress,  1821-1822,  pp.  72t-77. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       139 

amendment  to  the  Federal  Constitution  empowering  Congress  at 
once  to  prohibit  the  further  importation  of  slaves  and  other 
persons  of  color  from  Africa  and  the  West  Indies,  Copies  were 
ordered  sent  not  only  to  the  state's  delegation  in  Congress  but 
to  the  governors  of  the  other  states  for  transmission  to  the  legis- 
latures with  a  view  to  their  concurrence.^^  In  the  next  year 
similar  resolutions  were  adopted  by  the  legislatures  of  New 
Hampshire,  Vermont,  Maryland  and  Tennessee ;  ^'  but  the  ap- 
proach of  the  time  when  Congress  would  acquire  the  authority 
without  a  change  of  the  Constitution  caused  a  shifting  of  popular 
concern  from  the  scheme  of  amendment  to  the  expected  legis- 
lation of  Congress.  Meanwhile,  a  bill  for  the  temporary  govern- 
ment of  the  Louisiana  purchase  raised  the  question  of  African 
importations  there  which  occasioned  a  debate  in  the  Senate  at 
the  beginning  of  1804  ^*  nearly  as  vigorous  as  those  to  come  on 
the  general  question  three  years  afterward. 

In  the  winter  of  1804- 1805  bills  were  introduced  in  both 
Senate  and  House  to  prohibit  slave  importations  at  large;  but 
the  one  was  postponed  for  a  year  and  the  other  was  re- 
jected, ^^  doubtless  because  the  time  was  not  near  enough  when 
they  could  take  efifect.  At  last  the  matter  was  formally  presented 
by  President  Jefferson.  "1  congratulate  you,  fellow-citizens,"  he 
said  in  his  annual  message  of  December  2,  1806,  "on  the  approach 
of  the  period  at  which  you  may  interpose  your  authority  con- 
stitutionally to  withdraw  the  citizans  of  the  United  States  from 
all  further  participation  in  those  violations  of  human  rights 
which  have  been  so  long  continued  on  the  unoffending  inhabitants 
of  Africa,  and  which  the  morality,  the  reputation,  and  the  best 
interests  of  our  country  have  long  been  eager  to  proscribe. 
Although  no  law  you  can  pass  can  take  effect  until  the  day  of 
the  year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,  yet  the  inter- 

"  Broadside  copy  of  the  resolution,  accompanied  by  a  letter  of  Governor 
James  Turner  of  North  Carolina  to  the  governor  of  Connecticut,  in  the 
possession  of  the  Pennsylvania  Historical  Society. 

^H.  V.  Ames,  Proposed  Amendments  to  the  Constitution,  in  the 
American  Historical  Association  Report  for  1896,  pp.  208.  209. 

**  Printed  from  Senator  Plumer's  notes,  in  the  American  Historical  Rc' 
view,  XXII,  340-364. 

*W.  E.  B.  DuBois,  Suppression  of  the  African  Slave  Trade,  p.  105. 


I40  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

vening  period  is  not  too  long  to  prevent,  by  timely  notice,  expe- 
ditions which  cannot  be  completed  before  that  day."  ^^  Next  day 
Senator  Bradley  of  Vermont  gave  notice  of  a  bill  which  was 
shortly  afterward  introduced  and  which,  after  an  unreported 
discussion,  was  passed  by  the  Senate  on  January  27.  Its  con- 
spicuous provisions  were  that  after  the  close  of  the  year  1807  the 
importation  of  slaves  was  to  be  a  felony  punishable  with  death, 
and  that  the  interstate  coasting  trade  in  slaves  should  be  illegal. 

The  report  of  proceedings  in  the  House  was  now  full,  now 
scant.  The  paragraph  of  the  President's  message  was  referred 
on  December  3  to  a  committee  of  seven  with  Peter  Early  of 
Georgia  as  chairman  and  three  other  Southerners  in  the  mem- 
bership. The  committee's  bill  reported  on  December  15,  pro- 
posed to  prohibit  slave  importations,  to  penalize  the  fitting  out 
of  vessels  for  the  trade  by  fine  and  forfeiture,  to  lay  fines  and 
forfeitures  likewise  upon  the  owners  and  masters  found  within 
the  jurisdictional  waters  of  the  United  States  with  slaves  from 
abroad  on  board,  and  empowered  the  President  to  use  armed 
vessels  in  enforcement.  It  further  provided  that  if  slaves  ille- 
gally introduced  should  be  found  within  the  United  States  they 
should  be  forfeited,  and  any  person  wittingly  concerned  in  buy- 
ing or  selling  them  should  be  fined ;  it  laid  the  burden  of  proof 
upon  defendants  when  charged  on  reasonable  grounds  of  pre- 
sumption with  having  violated  the  act;  and  it  prescribed  that 
the  slaves  forfeited  should,  like  other  goods  in  the  same  status, 
be  sold  at  public  outcry  by  the  proper  federal  functionaries.^^ 

Mr.  Sloan  of  New  Jersey  instantly  moved  to  amend  by  pro- 
viding that  the  forfeited  slaves  be  entitled  to  freedom.  Mr. 
Early  replied  that  this  would  rob  the  bill  of  all  effect  by  depriv- 
ing it  of  public  sanction  in  the  districts  whither  slaves  were  likely 
to  be  brought.  Those  communities,  he  said,  would  never  tolerate 
the  enforcement  of  a  law  which  would  set  fresh  Africans  at 
large  in  their  midst.  Mr.  Smilie,  voicing  the  sentiment  and  in- 
dicating the  dilemma  of  most  of  his  fellow  Pennsylvanians,  de- 
clared his  unconquerable  aversion  to  any  measure  which  would 

"Annals  of  Congress,  1806-1807,  p.  14. 
"Ibid.,  pp.  167,  168. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       141 

make  the  federal  government  a  dealer  in  slaves,  but  confessed 
that  he  had  no  programme  of  his  own.  Nathaniel  Macon,  the 
Speaker,  saying  that  he  thought  the  desire  to  enact  an  effective 
law  was  universal,  agreed  with  Early  that  Sloan's  amendment 
would  defeat  the  purpose.  Early  himself  waxed  vehement, 
prophesying  the  prompt  extermination  of  any  smuggled  slaves 
emancipated  in  the  Southern  states.  The  amendment  was  de- 
feated by  a  heavy  majority. 

Next  day,  however,  Mr.  Bidwell  of  Massachusetts  renewed 
Sloan's  attack  by  moving  to  strike  out  the  provision  for  the 
forfeiture  of  the  slaves ;  but  his  colleague  Josiah  Quincy,  sup- 
ported by  the  equally  sagacious  Timothy  Pitkin  of  Connecticut, 
insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  forfeiture ;  and  Early  contended 
that  this  was  particularly  essential  to  prevent  the  smuggling  of 
slaves  across  the  Florida  border  where  the  ships  which  had 
brought  them  would  keep  beyond  the  reach  of  congressional  laws. 
The  House  finding  itself  in  an  impasse  referred  the  bill  back 
to  the  same  committee,  which  soon  reported  it  in  a  new  form 
declaring  the  illegal  importation  of  slaves  a  felony  punishable 
with  death.  Upon  Early's  motion  this  provision  was  promptly 
stricken  out  in  committee  of  the  whole  by  a  vote  of  60  to  41  ; 
whereupon  Bidwell  renewed  his  proposal  to  strike  out  the  for- 
feiture of  slaves.  He  was  numerously  supported  in  speeches 
whose  main  burden  was  that  the  United  States  government  must 
not  become  the  receiver  of  stolen  goods.  The  speeches  in  reply 
stressed  afresh  the  pivotal  quality  of  forfeiture  in  an  effective 
law;  and  Bidwell  when  pressed  for  an  alternative  plan  could 
only  say  that  he  might  if  necessary  be  willing  to  leave  them  to 
the  disposal  of  the  several  states,  but  was  at  any  rate  "opposed 
to  disgracing  our  statute  book  with  a  recognition  of  the  principle 
of  slavery."  Quincy  replied  that  he  wished  Bidwell  and  his 
fellows  "would  descend  from  their  high  abstract  ground  to  the 
level  of  things  in  their  own  state — such  as  have,  do  and  will 
exist  after  your  lajys,  and  in  spite  of  them."  The  Southern 
members,  said  he,  were  anxious  for  nothing  so  much  as  a  total 
prohibition,  and  for  that  reason  were  insistent  upon  forfeiture. 
For  the  sake  of  enforcing  the  law,  and  for  the  sake  of  controlling 


142  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  future  condition  of  the  smuggled  slaves,  forfeiture  was  im- 
perative. Such  a  provision  would  not  necessarily  admit  that  the 
importers  had  had  a  title  in  the  slaves  before  capture,  but  it  and 
it  alone  would  effectively  divest  them  of  any  color  of  title  to 
which  they  might  pretend.  The  amendment  was  defeated  by  a 
vote  of  36  to  63. 

When  the  bill  with  amendments  was  reported  to  the  House  by 
the  committee  of  the  whole,  on  December  31,  there  was  vigorous 
debate  upon  the  question  of  substituting  imprisonment  of  from 
five  to  ten  years  in  place  of  the  death  penalty,  Mr.  Talmadge 
of  Connecticut  supported  the  provision  of  death  with  a  bibUcal 
citation;  and  Mr.  Smilie  said  he  considered  it  the  very  marrow 
of  the  bill.  Mr.  Lloyd  of  Maryland  thought  the  death  penalty 
would  be  out  of  proportion  to  the  crime,  and  considered  the 
extract  from  Exodus  inapplicable  since  few  of  the  negroes  im- 
ported had  been  stolen  in  Africa.  But  Mr.  Olin  of  Vermont 
announced  that  the  man-stealing  argument  had  persuaded  him 
in  favor  of  the  extreme  penalty.  Early  now  became  furious,  and 
in  his  fury,  frank,  f  In  a  preceding  speech  he  had  pronounced 
slavery  "an  evil  regretted  by  every  man  in  the  country."  ^^  He 
now  said:  |*'A  large  majority  of  the  people  in  the  Southern 
states  do  not  .  .  .  believe  it  immoral  to  hold  human  flesh  in 
bondage.  Many  deprecate  slavery  as  an  evil ;  as  a  political  evil ;• 
but  not  as  a  crime.|  Reflecting  men  apprehend,  at  some  future 
day,  evils,  incalculable  evils,  from  it;  but  it  is  a  fact  that  few, 
very  few,  consider  it  as  a  crime.  It  is  best  to  be  candid  on  this 
subject.  ...  I  will  tell  the  truth.  A  large  majority  of  people 
in  the  Southern  states  do  not  consider  slavery  as  an  evil.  Let 
the  gentleman  go  and  travel  in  that  quarter  of  the  Union;  let 
him  go  from  neighborhood  to  neighborhood,  and  he  will  find 
that  this  is  the  fact.  Some  gentlemen  appear  to  legislate  for  the 
sake  of  appearances.  ...  I  should  like  to  know  what  honor  you 
will  derive  from  a  law  that  will  be  broken  every  day  of  your 
lives."  2^  Mr.  Stanton  said  with  an  air  of  deprecation  on  behalf 
of  his  state  of  Rhode  Island:    "I  wish  the  law  made  so  strong 

^Annals  of  Congress,  1806-1807,  p.  174. 
^  Ibid.,  pp.  238,  239. 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       143 

as  to  prevent  this  trade  in  future ;  but  I  cannot  believe  that  a  man 
ought  to  be  hung  for  only  stealing  a  negro.  Those  who  buy 
them  are  as  bad  as  those  who  import  them,  and  deserve  hanging 
quite  as  much."  The  yeas  and  nays  recorded  at  the  end  of  the 
exhausting  day  showed  6^  in  favor  and  53  against  the  substitu- 
tion of  imprisonment.  The  North  was  divided,  29  to  37,  with 
the  nays  coming  mostly  from  Pennsylvania,  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut;  the  South,  although  South  Carolina  as  well  as 
Kentucky  was  evenly  divided,  cast  34  yeas  to  16  nays.  Virginia 
and  Maryland,  which  might  have  been  expected  to  be  doubtful, 
virtually  settled  the  question  by  casting  17  yeas  against  6  nays. 

When  the  consideration  of  the  bill  was  resumed  on  January  7, 
Mr.  Bidwell  renewed  his  original  attack  by  moving  to  strike  out 
the  confiscation  of  slaves ;  and  when  this  was  defeated  by  39  to 
yy,  he  attempted  to  reach  the  same  end  by  a  proviso  "That  no 
person  shall  be  sold  as  a  slave  by  virtue  of  this  act."  This  was 
defeated  only  by  the  casting  vote  of  the  Speaker.  Those  voting 
aye  were  all  from  Northern  states,  except  Archer  of  Maryland, 
Broom  of  Delaware,  Bedinger  of  Kentucky  and  Williams  of 
North  Carolina.  The  noes  were  all  from  the  South  except  one 
from  New  Hampshire,  ten  from  New  York,  and  one  from 
Pennsylvania.  The  outcome  was  evidently  unsatisfactory  to  the 
bulk  of  the  members,  for  on  the  next  day  a  motion  to  recommit  the 
bill  to  a  new  committee  of  seventeen  prevailed  by  a  vote  of  76 
to  46.  Among  the  members  who  shifted  their  position  over  night 
were  six  of  the  ten  from  New  York,  four  from  Maryland,  three 
from  Virginia,  and  two  from  North  Carolina.  In  the  new  com- 
mittee Bedinger  of  Kentucky,  who  was  regularly  on  the  Northern 
side,  was  chairman,  and  Early  was  not  included. 

This  committee  reported  in  February  a  bill  providing,  as  a 
compromise,  that  forfeited  negroes  should  be  carried  to  some 
place  in  the  United  States  where  slavery  was  either  not  per- 
mitted or  was  in  course  of  gradual  extinction,  and  there  be  inden- 
tured or  otherwise  employed  as  the  President  might  deem  best 
for  them  and  the  country.  Early  moved  that  for  this  there  be 
substituted  a  provision  that  the  slaves  be  delivered  to  the  several 
states  in  which  the  captures  were  made,  to  be  disposed  of  at 


144  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

discretion ;  and  he  said  that  the  Southern  people  would  resist  the 
indenture  provision  with  their  lives.  This  reckless  assertion  sug- 
gests that  Early  was  either  set  against  the  framing  of  an  effective 
law,  or  that  he  spoke  in  mere  blind  rage. 
^  Before  further  progress  was  made  the  House  laid  aside  its 
bill  in  favor  of  the  one  which  the  Senate  had  now  passed.  An 
amendment  to  this,  striking  out  the  death  penalty,  was  adopted 
on  February  12  by  a  vote  of  67  to  48.  The  North  gave  31  ayes 
and  7,6  noes,  quite  evenly  distributed  among  the  states.  The 
South  cast  37  ayes  to  11  noes,  five  of  the  latter  coming  from 
Virginia,  two  from  North  Carolina,  and  one  each  from  Delaware, 
Maryland,  Kentucky  and  South  Carolina.  A  considerable  shift- 
ing of  votes  appeared  since  the  ballot  on  the  same  question  six 
weeks  before.  Knight  of  Rhode  Island,  Sailly  and  Williams  of 
New  York,  Helms  of  New  Jersey  and  Wynns  of  North  Caro- 
lina changed  in  favor  of  the  extreme  penalty;  but  they  were 
more  than  ofifset  by  the  opposite  change  of  Bidwell  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Van  Cortlandt  of  New  York,  Lambert  of  New  Jersey, 
Clay  and  Gray  of  Virginia  and  McFarland  of  North  Carolina. 
Numerous  members  from  all  quarters  who  voted  on  one  of  these 
roll-calls  were  silent -airthe  other,  and  this  variation  also  had  a 
net  result  against  the  infliction  of  death.  The  House  then  filled 
the  blank  it  had  made  in  the  bill  by  defining  the  offense  as  a  high 
misdemeanor  and  providing  a  penalty  of  imprisonment  of  not 
less  than  five  nor  more  than  ten  years.  John  Randolph  opposed 
even  this  as  excessive,  but  found  himself  unsupported.  The 
House  then  struck  out  the  prohibition  of  the  coasting  trade  in 
slaves,  and  returned  the  bill  as  amended  to  the  Senate.  The 
latter  concurred  in  all  the  changes  except  that  as  to  the  coast- 
wise trade,  and  sent  the  bill  back  to  the  House. 

John  Randolph  now  led  in  the  insistence  that  the  House  stand 
firm.  If  the  bill  should  pass  without  the  amendment,  said  he, 
the  Southern  people  would  set  the  law  at  defiance,  and  he  him- 
self would  begin  the  violation  of  so  unconstitutional  an  infringe- 
ment of  the  rights  of  property.  The  House  voted  to  insist  upon 
its  amendment,  and  sent  the  bill  to  conference  where  in  compro- 
mise the  prohibition  as  to  the  coastwise  carriage  of  slaves  for 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       145 

sale  was  made  to  apply  only  to  vessels  of  less  than  forty  tons 
burthen.  The  Senate  agreed  to  this.  In  the  House  Mr.  Early 
opposed  it  as  improper  in  law  and  so  easy  of  evasion  that  it 
would  be  perfectly  futile  for  the  prevention  of  smuggling  from 
Florida.  John  Randolph  said :  "The  provision  of  the  bill 
touched  the  right  of  private  property.  He  feared  lest  at  a  future 
period  it  might  be  made  the  pretext  of  universal  emancipation. 
He  had  rather  lose  the  bill,  he  had  rather  lose  all  the  bills  of  the 
session,  he  had  rather  lose  every  bill  passed  since  the  establishment 
of  the  government,  than  agree  to  the  provision  contained  in  this 
slave  bill.  It  went  to  blow  up  the  Constitution  in  ruins."  ^^  Con- 
currence was  carried,  nevertheless,  by  a  vote  of  63  to  49,  in  which 
the  North  cast  51  ayes  to  12  noes,  and  the  South  12  ayes  to 
37  noes.  The  Southern  ayes  were  four  from  Maryland,  four 
from  North  Carolina,  two  from  Tennessee,  and  one  each  from 
Virginia  and  Kentucky.  The  Northern  noes  were  five  from 
New  York,  two  each  from  New  Hampshire  and  Vermont,  and 
one  each  from  Massachusetts,  Connecticut  and  Pennsylvania. 

The  bill  then  passed  the  House.  Its  variance  from  the  original 
House  bill  was  considerable,  for  it  made  the  importation  of  slaves 
from  abroad  a  high  misdemeanor  punishable  with  imprisonment ; 
it  prohibited  the  coastwise  trade  by  sea  in  vessels  of  less  than  forty 
tons,  and  required  the  masters  of  larger  vessels  transporting 
negroes  coastwise  to  deliver  to  the  port  officials  classified  mani- 
fests of  the  negroes  and  certificates  that  to  the  best  of  their  knowl- 
edge and  belief  the  slaves  had  not  been  imported  since  the  be- 
ginning of  1808;  and  instead  of  forfeiture  to  the  United  States 
it  provided  that  all  smuggled  slaves  seized  under  the  act  should 
be  subject  to  such  disposal  as  the  laws  of  the  state  or  territory 
in  which  the  seizure  might  be  made  should  prescribe.^^  Ran- 
dolph, still  unreconciled,  offered  an  explanatory  act,  February 
2.'],  that  nothing  in  the  preceding  act  should  be  construed  to  affect 
in  any  manner  the  absolute  property  right  of  masters  in  their 
slaves  not  imported  contrary  to  the  law,  and  that  such  masters 
should  not  be  liable  to  any  penalty  for  the  coastwise  transporta- 

*"  Annals  of  Congress,  1806-1807,  p.  626. 
*^  Ibid.,  pp.  1266-1270. 


146  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tion  of  slaves  in  vessels  of  less  than  forty  tons.  In  attempting  to 
force  this  measure  through,  he  said  that  if  it  did  not  pass  the 
House  at  once  he  hoped  the  Virginia  delegation  would  wait  on  the 
President  and  remonstrate  against  his  approving  the  act  which 
had  passed.^^  By  a  vote  of  60  to  49  this  bill  was  made  the  order 
for  the  next  day;  but  its  further  consideration  was  crowded 
out  by  the  rush  of  business  at  the  session's  close.  The  President 
signed  the  prohibitory  bill  on  March  2,  without  having  received 
the  threatened  Virginia  visitation. 

Among  the  votes  in  the  House  on  which  the  yeas  and  nays  were 
recorded  in  the  course  of  these  complex  proceedings,  six  may  be 
taken  as  tests.  They  were  on  striking  out  the  death  penalty,  De- 
cember 31;  on  striking  out  the  forfeiture  of  slaves,  January  7; 
on  the  proviso  that  no  person  should  be  sold  by  virtue  of  the  act, 
January  7;  on  referring  the  bill  to  a  new  committee,  January 
8;  on  striking  out  the  death  penalty  from  the  Senate  bill,  Feb- 
ruary 12 ;  and  on  the  prohibition  of  the  coasting  trade  in  slaves 
in  vessels  of  under  forty  tons,  February  26.  In  each  case  a 
majority  of  the  Northern  members  voted  on  one  side  of  the 
question,  and  a  yet  larger  majority  of  Southerners  voted  on  the 
other.  Twenty-two  members  voted  in  every  case  on  the  side 
which  the  North  tended  to  adopt.  These  comprised  seven  from 
Massachusetts,  six  from  Pennsylvania,  three  from  Connecticut, 
and  one  or  two  from  each  of  the  other  Northern  states  except 
Rhode  Island  and  Ohio.  They  comprised  also  Broom  of  Dela- 
ware, Bedinger  of  Kentucky,  and  Morrow  of  Virginia ;  while 
Williams  of  North  Carolina  was  almost  equally  constant  in 
opposing  the  policies  advocated  by  the  bulk  of  his  fellow  South- 
erners. On  the  other  hand  the  regulars  on  the  Southern  side 
comprised  not  only  ten  Virginians,  all  of  the  six  South  Caro- 
linians, except  three  of  their  number  on  the  punishment  ques- 
tions, all  of  the  four  Georgians,  three  North  Carolinians,  two 
Marylanders  and  one  Kentuckian,  but  in  addition  Tenney  of 
New  Hampshire,  Schuneman,  Van  Rensselaer  and  Verplanck 
of  New  York  on  all  but  the  punishment  questions. 

On  the  whole,  sectional  divergence  was  fairly  pronounced,  but 

"Annals  of  Congress,  1806- 1807,  p.  637, 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       147 

only  on  matters  of  detail.  The  expressions  from  all  quarters  of 
a  common  desire  to  make  the  prohibition  of  importations  effective 
were  probably  sincere  without  material  exception.  As  regards 
the  Virginia  group  of  states,  their  economic  interest  in  high  prices 
for  slaves  vouches  for  the  genuine  purpose  of  their  repre- 
sentatives, while  that  of  the  Georgians  and  South  Carolinians 
may  at  the  most  be  doubted  and  not  disproved.  The  South  in 
general  wished  to  prevent  any  action  which  might  by  implication 
stigmatize  the  slaveholding  regime,  and  was  on  guard  also  against 
precedents  tending  to  infringe  state  rights.  The  North,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  largely  divided  between  a  resolve  to  stop  the 
sanction  of  slavery  and  a  desire  to  enact  an  effective  law  in  the 
premises  directly  at  issue.  The  outcome  was  a  law  which  might 
be  evaded  with  relative  ease  wherever  public  sanction  was  weak, 
but  which  nevertheless  proved  fairly  effective  in  operation. 

When  slave  prices  rose  to  high  levels  after  the  war  of  1812 
systematic  smuggliiig  began  to  prevail  from  Amelia  Island  on  the 
Florida  border,  and  on  a  smaller  scale  on  the  bayous  of  the  Bar- 
ataria  district  below  New  Orleans;  but  these  operations  were 
checked  upon  the  passage  of  a  congressional  act  in  1818  increasing 
the  rewards  to  informers.  Another  act  in  the  following  year 
directed  the  President  to  employ  armed  vessels  for  police  in  both 
African  and  American  waters,  and  incidentally  made  provisions 
contemplating  the  return  of  captured  slaves  to  Africa.  Finally 
Congress  by  an  act  of  1820  declared  the  maritime  slave  trade 
to  be  piracy.^^  Smuggling  thereafter  diminished  though  it  never 
completely  ceased. 

As  to  the  dimensions  of  the  illicit  importations  between  1808 
and  i860,  conjectures  have  placed  the  gross  as  high  as  two  hun- 
dred and  seventy  thousand.^*  Most  of  the  documents  in  the 
premises,  however,  bear  palpable  marks  of  unreliability.  It  may 
suffice  to  say  that  these  importations  were  never  great  enough 
to  affect  the  labor  supply  in  appreciable  degree.     So  far  as  the 

"DuBois,  Suppression  of  the  Slave  Trade,  pp.  1 18-123. 

**W.  H.  Collins,  The  Domestic  Slave  Trade  of  the  Southern  States  (New 
York  [1904],  pp.  12-20).  See  also  W.  E.  B.  DuBois,  "Enforcement  of  the 
Slave  Trade  Laws,"  in  the  American  Historical  Association  Report  for 
1891,  p.  173. 


148  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

general  economic  regime  was  concerned,  the  foreign  slave  trade 
was  effectually  closed  in  1808. 

At  that  time,  however,  there  were  already  in  the  United  States 
about  one  million  slaves  to  serve  as  a  stock  from  which  other 
millions  were  to  be  born  to  replenish  the  plantations  in  the  east 
and  to  aid  in  the  peopling  of  the  west.  These  were  ample  to 
maintain  a  chronic  racial  problem,  and  had  no  man  invented  a 
cotton  gin  their  natural  increase  might  well  have  glutted  the 
market  for  plantation  labor.  Had  the  African  source  been  kept 
freely  open,  the  bringing  of  great  numbers  to  meet  the  demand 
in  prosperous  times  would  quite  possibly  have  so  burdened  the 
country  with  surplus  slaves  in  subsequent  periods  of  severe  de- 
pression that  slave  prices  would  have  fallen  virtually  to 
zero,  and  the  slaveholding  community  would  have  been  driven  to 
emancipate  them  wholesale  as  a  means  of  relieving  the  masters 
from  the  burden  of  the  slaves'  support.  The  foes  of  slavery  had 
long  reckoned  that  the  abolition  of  the  foreign  trade  would  be  a 
fatal  blow  to  slavery  itself.  The  event  exposed  their  fallacy. 
Thomas  Clarkson  expressed  the  disappointment  of  the  English 
abolitionists  in  a  letter  of  1830:  "We  certainly  have  been  de- 
ceived in  our  first  expectations  relative  to  the  ffuit  of  our  exer- 
tions. We  supposed  that  when  by  the  abolition  of  the  slave 
trade  the  planters  could  get  no  more  slaves,  they  would  not  only 
treat  better  those  whom  they  then  had  in  their  power,  but  that 
they  would  gradually  find  it  to  their  advantage  to  emancipate 
them.  A  part  of  our  expectations  have  been  realized ;  .  .  .  but, 
alas !  where  the  heart  has  been  desperately  wicked,  we  have  found 
no  change.  We  did  not  sufficiently  take  into  account  the  effect 
of  unlimited  power  on  the  human  mind.  No  man  likes  to  part 
with  power,  and  the  more  unbounded  it  is,  the  less  he  likes  to  part 
with  it.  Neither  did  we  sufficiently  take  into  account  the  igno- 
miny attached  to  a  black  skin  as  the  badge  of  slavery,  and  how 
difficult  it  would  be  to  make  men  look  with  a  favourable  eye 
upon  what  they  had  looked  [upon]  formerly  as  a  disgrace.  Neither 
did  we  take  sufficiently  into  account  the  belief  which  every  planter 
has,  that  such  an  unnatural  state  as  that  of  slavery  can  be  kept  up 
only  by  a  system  of  rigour,  and  how  difficult  therefore  it  would 


THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  AFRICAN  TRADE       149 

be  to  procure  a  relaxation  from  the  ordinary  discipline  of  a  slave 
estate."35 

If  such  was  the  failure  in  the  British  West  Indies,  the  change 
in  conditions  in  the  United  States  was  even  greater;  for  the 
rise  of  the  cotton  industry  concurred  with  the  prohibition  of  the 
African  trade  to  enhance  immensely  the  preciousness  of  slaves 
and  to  increase  in  similar  degree  the  financial  obstacle  to  a  sweep- 
ing abolition. 

"MS.  in  private  possession. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  AND  SUGAR 

THE  decade  following  the  peace  of  1783  brought  depression 
in  all  the  plantation  districts.  The  tobacco  industry,  upon 
which  half  of  the  Southern  people  depended  in  greater  or 
less  degree,  was  entering  upon  a  half  century  of  such  wellnigh 
constant  low  prices  that  the  opening  of  each  new  tract  for  its 
culture  was  offset  by  the  abandonment  of  an  old  one,  and  the  ex- 
port remained  stationary  at  a  little  less  than  half  a  million 
hogsheads.  Indigo  production  was  decadent;  and  rice  culture 
was  in  painful  transition  to  the  new  tide-flow  system.  Slave 
prices  everywhere,  like  those  of  most  other  investments,  were 
declining  in  so  disquieting  a  manner  that  as  late  as  the  end  of 
1794  George  Washington  advised  a  friend  to  convert  his  slaves 
into  other  forms  of  property,  and  said  on  his  own  account: 
"Were  it  not  that  I  am  principled  against  selling  negroes,  as  you 
would  cattle  in  a  market,  I  would  not  in  twelve  months  hence  be 
possessed  of  a  single  one  as  a  slave.  I  shall  be  happily  mistaken 
if  they  are  not  found  to  be  a  very  troublesome  species  of  prop- 
erty ere  many  years  have  passed  over  our  heads."  ^  But  at  that 
very  time  the  addition  of  cotton  and  sugar  to  the  American 
staples  was  on  the  point  of  transforming  the  slaveholders' 
prospects. 

For  centuries  cotton  had  been  among  the  world's  materials  for 
cloth,  though  the  dearth  of  supply  kept  it  in  smaller  use  than 
wool  or  flax.  This  continued  to  be  the  case  even  when  the 
original  sources  in  the  Orient  were  considerably  supplemented 
from  the  island  of  Bourbon  and  from  the  colonies  of  Demarara, 
Berbice  and  Surinam  which  dotted  the  tropical  South  American 
coast  now  known  as  Guiana.  Then,  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  great  English  inventions  of  spinning  and 

'  New  York  Public  Library  Bulletin,  1898,  pp.  14,  15. 

150 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  151 

weaving  machinery  so  cheapened  the  manufacturing  process  that 
the  world's  demand  for  textiles  was  immensely  stimulated. 
Europe  was  eagerly  inquiring  for  new  fiber  supplies  at  the  very 
time  when  the  plantation  states  of  America  were  under  the 
strongest  pressure  for  a  new  source  of  income. 

The  green-seed,  short-staple  variety  of  cotton  had  long  been 
cultivated  for  domestic  use  in  the  colonies  from  New  Jersey  to 
Georgia,  but  on  such  a  petty  scale  that  spinners  occasionally 
procured  supplies  from  abroad.  Thus  George  Washington,  who 
amid  his  many  activities  conducted  a  considerable  cloth- 
making  establishment,  wrote  to  his  factor  in  1773  that  a  bale  of 
cotton  received  from  England  had  been  damaged  in  transit.^  The 
cutting  off  of  the  foreign  trade  during  the  war  for  independence 
forced  the  Americans  to  increase  their  cotton  production  to 
supply  their  necessities  for  apparel.  A  little  of  it  was  even  ex- 
ported at  the  end  of  the  war,  eight  bags  of  which  are  said  to 
have  been  seized  by  the  customs  officers  at  Liverpool  in  1784  on 
the  ground  that  since  America  could  not  produce  so  great  a 
quantity  the  invoice  must  be  fraudulent.  But  cotton  was  as  yet 
kept  far  from  staple  rank  by  one  great  obstacle,  the  lack  of  a 
gin.  The  fibers  of  the  only  variety  at  hand  clung  to  the  seed  as 
fast  as  the  wool  to  the  sheep's  back.  It  had  to  be  cut  or  torn 
away;  and  because  the  seed-tufts  were  so  small,  this  operation 
when  performed  by  hand  was  exceedingly  slow  and  correspond- 
ingly expensive.  The  preparation  of  a  pound  or  two  of  lint  a 
day  was  all  that  a  laborer  could  accomplish. 

The  problem  of  the  time  had  two  possible  solutions ;  the  inven- 
tion of  a  machine  for  cleaning  the  lint  from  the  seed  of  the  sort 
already  at  hand,  or  the  introduction  of  some  different  variety 
whose  lint  was  -more  lightly  attached.  Both  solutions  were 
applied,  and  the  latter  first  in  point  of  time  though  not  in  point 
of  importance. 

About  1786  seed  of  several  strains  was  imported  from  as  many 
quarters  by  planters  on  the  Georgia-Carolina  coast.  Experiments 
with  the  Bourbon  variety,  which  yielded  the  finest  lint  then  in 
the  market,  showed  that  the  growing  season  was  too  short  for 

'MS.  in  the  Library  of  Congress,  Washington  letter-books,  XVII,  go. 


152  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  ripening  of  its  pods;  but  seed  procured  from  the  Bahama 
Islands,  of  the  sort  which  has  ever  since  been  known  as  sea- 
island,  not  only  made  crops  but  yielded  a  finer  fiber  than  they  had 
in  their  previous  home.  This  introduction  was  accomplished  by 
the  simultaneous  experiments  of  several  planters  on  the  Georgia 
coast.  Of  these,  Thomas  Spaulding  and  Alexander  Bissett 
planted  the  seed  in  1786  but  saw  their  plants  fail  to  ripen  any 
pods  that  year.  But  the  ensuing  winter  happened  to  be  so  mild 
that,  although  the  cotton  is  not  commonly  a  perennial  outside 
the  tropics,  new  shoots  grew  from  the  old  roots  in  the  following 
spring  and  yielded  their  crop  in  the  fall.^  Among  those  who 
promptly  adopted  the  staple  was  Richard  Leake,  who  wrote  from 
Savannah  at  the  end  of  1788  to  Tench  Coxe:  'T  have  been  this 
year  an  adventurer,  and  the  first  that  has  attempted  on  a  large 
scale,  in  the  article  of  cotton.  Several  here  as  well  as  in  Caro- 
lina have  followed  me  and  tried  the  experiment.  I  shall  raise 
about  5000  pounds  in  the  seed  from  about  eight  acres  of  land, 
and  the  next  year  I  expect  to  plant  from  fifty  to  one  hundred 
acres."  * 

The  first  success  in  South  Carolina  appears  to  have  been  at- 
tained by  William  Elliott,  on  Hilton  Head  near  Beaufort,  in  1790. 
He  bought  five  and  a  half  bushels  of  seed  in  Charleston  at  14^' 
per  bushel,  and  sold  his  crop  at  loj^d  per  pound.  In  the  next 
year  John  Screven  of  St.  Luke's  parish  planted  thirty  or  forty 
acres,  and  sold  his  yield  at  from  is.  2d.  to  is.  6d.  sterling  per 
pound.  Many  other  planters  on  the  islands  and  the  adjacent 
mainland  now  joined  the  movement.  Some  of  them  encountered 
failure,  among  them  General  Moultrie  of  Revolutionary  fame  who 
planted  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres  in  St.  John's  Berkeley  in  1793 
and  reaped  virtually  nothing.^ 

The  English  market  came  promptly  to  esteem  the  long,  strong, 
silky  sea-island  fiber  as  the  finest  of  all  cottons;  and  the  prices 

'Letter  of  Thomas  Spaulding,  Sapelo  Island,  Georgia,  Jan.  20,  1844,  to 
W.  B.  Seabrook,  in  J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  The  Cotton  Planter's  Manual  (New 
York,  1857),  pp.  280-286. 

*E.  J.  Donnell,  Chronological  and  Statistical  History  of  Cotton  (New 
York,  1872),  p.  45. 

°  Whitemarsh  B.  Seabrook,  Memoir  on  the  Origin,  Cultivation  and  Uses 
pf  Cotton  (Charleston,  1844),  pp.  19,  20. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  153 

at  Liverpool  rose  before  the  end  of  the  century  to  as  high  as  five 
shillings  a  pound.  This  brought  fortunes  in  South  Carolina. 
Captain  James  Sinkler  from  a  crop  of  three  hundred  acres  on  his 
plantation,  "Belvedere,"  in  1794  gathered  216  pounds  to  the  acre, 
which  at  prices  ranging  from  fifty  to  seventy-five  cents  a  pound 
brought  him  a  gross  return  of  $509  per  laborer  employed.*  Peter 
Gaillard  of  St.  John's  Berkeley  received  for  his  crop  of  the  same 
year  an  average  of  $340  per  hand ;  and  William  Brisbane  of  St. 
Paul's  earned  so  much  in  the  three  years  from  1796  to  1798  that 
he  found  himself  rich  enough  to  retire  from  work  and  spend  sev- 
eral years  in  travel  at  the  North  and  abroad.  He  sold  his  plan- 
tation to  William  Seabrook  at  a  price  which  the  neighbors  thought 
ruinously  high,  but  Seabrook  recouped  the  whole  of  it  from  the 
proceeds  of  two  years'  crops.'^ 

The  methods  of  tillage  were  quickly  systematized.  Instead  of 
being  planted,  as  at  first,  in  separate  holes,  the  seed  came  to  be 
drilled  and  plants  grown  at  intervals  of  one  or  two  feet  on  ridges 
five  or  six  feet  apart ;  and  the  number  of  hoeings  was  increased. 
But  the  thinner  fruiting  of  this  variety  prevented  the  planters 
from  attaining  generally  more  than  about  half  the  output  per  acre 
which  their  upland  colleagues  came  to  reap  from  their  crops  of 
the  shorter  staple.  A  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  to  the  acre  and 
three  or  four  acres  to  the  hand  was  esteemed  a  reasonable  crop  on 
the  seaboard.^  The  exports  of  the  sea-island  staple  rose  by  1805 
to  nearly  nine  million  pounds,  but  no  further  expansion  occurred 
until  1819  when  an  increase  carried  the  exports  for  a  decade  to 
about  eleven  million  pounds  a  year.  In  the  course  of  the  'twen- 
ties Kinsey  Burden  and  Hugh  Wilson,  both  of  St.  John's  Colle- 
ton, began  breeding  superfine  fiber  through  seed  selection,  with 
such  success  that  the  latter  sold  two  of  his  bales  in  1828  at  the 
unequaled  price  of  two  dollars  a  pound.  The  practice  of  raising 
fancy  grades  became  fairly  common  after  1830,  with  the  result, 

"  Samuel  DuBose,  Address  delivered  before  the  Black  Oak  Agricultural 
Society,  April  28,  1858,  in  T.  G.  Thomas,  The  Huguenots  of  South  Caro- 
lina (New  York,  1887). 

''  W.  B.  Seabrook,  Memoir  on  Cotton,  p.  20. 

■John  Drayton,  View  of  South  Carolina  (Charleston,  1802),  p.  132;  J» 
A.  Turner,  ed..  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  pp.  129,  131. 


154  AMERICz\N  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

however,  that  for  the  following  decade  the  exports  fell  again  to 
about  eight  million  pounds  a  year." 

Sea-island  cotton,  with  its  fibers  often  measuring  more  than 
two  inches  in  length,  had  the  advantages  of  easy  detachment  from 
its  glossy  black  seed  by  squeezing  it  between  a  pair  of  simple  roll- 
ers, and  of  a  price  for  even  its  common  grades  ranging  usually 
more  than  twice  that  of  the  upland  staple.  The  disadvantages 
were  the  slowness  of  the  harvesting,  caused  by  the  failure  of  the 
bolls  to  open  wide ;  the  smallness  of  the  yield ;  and  the  necessity 
of  careful  handling  at  all  stages  in  preparing  the  lint  for  market. 
Climatic  requirements,  furthermore,  confined  its  culture  within  a 
strip  thirty  or  forty  miles  wide  along  the  coast  of  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia.  In  the  first  flush  of  the  movement  some  of  the  rice 
fields  were  converted  to  cotton ;  ^^  but  experience  taught  the  com- 
munity ere  long  that  the  labor  expense  in  the  new  industry  ab- 
sorbed too  much  of  the  gross  return  for  it  to  displace  rice  from  its 
primacy  in  the  district. 

In  the  Carolina-Georgia  uplands  the  industrial  and  social  de- 
velopments of  the  eighteenth  century  had  been  in  marked  con-^ 
trast  with  those  on  the  seaboard.  These  uplands,  locally  known 
as  the  Piedmont,  were  separated  from  the  tide-water  tract  by  a 
flat  and  sandy  region,  the  "pine  barrens,"  a  hundred  miles  or  more 
in  breadth,  where  the  soil  was  generally  too  light  for  prosperous 
agriculture  before  the  time  when  commercial  fertilizers  came 
into  use.  The  Piedmont  itself  is  a  rolling  country,  extending 
without  a  break  from  Virginia  to  Alabama  and  from  the  moun- 
tains of  the  Blue  Ridge  to  the  line  of  the  lowest  falls  on  the  riv- 
ers. The  soil  of  mingled  clay  and  sand  was  originally  covered 
with  rich  forest  mold.  The  climate  was  moderately  suited  to 
a  great  variety  of  crops ;  but  nothing  was  found  for  which  it  had 
a  marked  superiority  until  short-staple  cotton  was  made  available. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  this  region  had 
come  to  be  occupied  in  scattered  homesteads  by  migrants  moving 
overland  from  Pennsylvania,  Maryland  and  Virginia,  extending 
their  regime  of  frontier   farms  until  the   stubborn   Creek  and 

"  Seabrook,  pp.  35-37,  53. 

*"  F.  A.  Michaux,  Travels,  in  R.  G.  Thwaites,  ed.,  Early  Western  Travels, 
in,  303. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  155 

Cherokee  Indian  tribes  barred  further  progress.  Later  comers 
from  the  same  northeastward  sources,  some  of  them  bringing  a 
few  slaves,  had  gradually  thickened  the  settlement  without 
changing  materially  its  primitive  system  of  life.  Not  many  re- 
cruits had  entered  from  the  rice  coast  in  colonial  times,  for  the 
regime  there  was  not  such  as  to  produce  pioneers  for  the  inte- 
rior. The  planters,  unlike  those  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  had 
never  imported  appreciable  numbers  of  indentured  servants  to 
become  in  after  years  yeomen  and  fathers  of  yeomen ;  the  slaves 
begat  slaves  alone  to  continue  at  their  masters'  bidding;  and  the 
planters  themselves  had  for  the  time  being  little  inducement  to 
forsake  the  lowlands.  The  coast  and  the  Piedmont  were  unas- 
sociated  except  by  a  trickle  of  trade  by  wagon  and  primitive 
river-boat  across  the  barrens.  The  capture  of  Savannah  and 
Charleston  by  the  British  during  the  War  for  Independence,  how- 
ever, doubtless  caused  a  number  of  the  nearby  inhabitants  to  move 
into  the  Piedmont  as  refugees,  carrying  their  slaves  with  them. 

The  commercial  demands  of  the  early  settlers  embraced  hardly 
anything  beyond  salt,  ammunition  and  a  little  hardware.  The 
forest  and  their  half-cleared  fields  furnished  meat  and  bread; 
workers  in  the  households  provided  rude  furniture  and  home- 
spun; and  luxuries,  except  home-made  liquoLrs,  were  unknown. 
But  the  time  soon  came  when  zealous  industry"  yielded  more  grain 
and  cattle  than  each  family  needed  for  its  own  supply.  The  sur- 
plus required  a  market,  which  the  seaboard  was  glad  to  furnish. 
The  road  and  river  traffic  increased,  and  the  procurement  of  mis- 
cellaneous goods  from  the  ports  removed  the  need  of  extreme  di- 
versity in  each  family's  work.  This  freeing  of  energy  led  in 
turn  to  a  search  for  more  profitable  market  crops.  Flax  and 
hemp  were  tried,  and  tobacco  with  some  success.  Several  new 
villages  were  founded,  indeed,  on  the  upper  courses  of  the  rivers 
to  serve  as  stations  for  the  inspection  and  shipment  of  tobacco; 
but  their  budding  hopes  of  prosperity  from  that  staple  were 
promptly  blighted.  The  product  was  of  inferior  grade,  the  price 
was  low,  and  the  cost  of  freightage  high.  The  export  from 
Charleston  rose  from  2680  hogsheads  in  1784  to  9646  in  1799, 
but  rapidly  declined  thereafter.     Tobacco,  never  more  than  a 


156  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

makeshift  staple,  was  gladly  abandoned  for  cotton  at  the  first 
opportunity.^^ 

At  the  time  of  the  federal  census  of  1790  there  were  in  the 
main  group  of  upland  counties  of  South  Carolina,  comprised  then 
in  the  two  "districts"  of  Camden  and  Ninety-six,  a  total  of  91,704 
white  inhabitants,  divided  into  15,652  famiHes.  Of  these  3787 
held  slaves  to  the  number  of  19,934 — an  average  of  5^4  slaves 
in  each  holding.  No  more  than  five  of  these  parcels  comprised 
as  many  as  one  hundred  slaves  each,  and  only  156  masters,  about 
four  per  cent,  of  the  whole,  had  as  many  as  twenty  each.  These 
larger  holdings,  along  with  the  335  other  parcels  ranging  from 
ten  to  nineteen  slaves  each,  were  of  course  grouped  mainly  in  the 
river  counties  in  the  lower  part  of  the  Piedmont,  while  the  small- 
est holdings  were  scattered  far  and  wide.  That  is  to  say,  there 
was  already  discoverable  a  tendency  toward  a  plantation  regime 
in  the  localities  most  accessible  to  market,  while  among  the  farm- 
ers about  one  in  four  had  one  or  more  slaves  to  aid  in  the  fam- 
ily's work.  The  Georgia  Piedmont,  for  which  the  returns  of  the 
early  censuses  have  been  lost,  probably  had  a  somewhat  smaller 
proportion  of  slaves  by  reason  of  its  closer  proximity  to  the  In- 
dian frontier. 

A  sprinkling  of  slaves  was  enough  to  whet  the  community's  ap- 
petite for  opportunities  to  employ  them  with  effect  and  to  buy 
more  slaves  with  the  proceeds.  It  is  said  that  in  1792  some  two 
or  three  million  pounds  of  short-staple  cotton  was  gathered  in 
the  Piedmont,^^  perhaps  in  anticipation  of  a  practicable  gin,  and 
that  the  state  of  Georgia  had  appointed  a  commission  to  promote 
the  desired  invention.^^  It  is  certain  that  many  of  the  citizens 
were  discussing  the  problem  when  in  the  spring  of  1793  young 
Eli  Whitney,  after  graduating  at  Yale  College,  left  his  home  in 
Massachusetts  intending  to  teach  school  in  the  South.  While 
making  a  visit  at  the  home  of  General  Greene's  widow,  near  Sa- 
vannah, he  listened  to  a  conversation  on  the  subject  by  visitors 

"  U.  B.  Phillips,  History  of  Transportation  in  the  Eastern  Cotton  Belt  to 
i860  (New  York,  igo8),  pp.  46-55. 

**  Letter  of  Phineas  Miller  to  the  Comptroller  of  South  Carolina,  in  the 
American  Historical  Rcincw,  III,  115. 

"M.  B.  Hammond,  The  Cotton  Industry  (New  York,  1897),  p.  23. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  157 

from  upland  Georgia,  and  he  was  urged  oy  Phineas  Miller,  the 
manager  of  the  Greene  estate,  to  apply  his  Yankee  ingenuity  to 
the  solution.  When  Miller  offered  to  bear  the  expenses  of  the 
project,  Whitney  set  to  work,  and  within  ten  days  made  a  model 
which  met  the  essential  requirements.  This  comprised  a  box 
with  a  slatted  side  against  which  a  wooden  cyHnder  studded  with 
wire  points  was  made  to  play.  When  seed  cotton  was  fed  into 
the  box  and  the  cylinder  was  revolved,  the  sharp  wires  passing 
between  the  slats  v/ould  engage  the  lint  and  pull  it  through  as  they 
passed  out  in  the  further  revolution  of  the  cylinder.  The  seed, 
which  were  too  large  to  pass  through  the  grating,  would  stay 
within  the  hopper  until  virtually  all  the  wool  was  torn  off,  where- 
upon they  would  fall  through  a  crevice  on  the  further  side.  The 
minor  problem  which  now  remained  of  freeing  the  cylinder's 
teeth  from  their  congestion  of  lint  found  a  solution  in  Mrs, 
Greene's  stroke  with  a  hearth-broom.  Whitney,  seizing  the 
principle,  equipped  his  machine  with  a  second  cyHnder  studded 
with  brushes,  set  parallel  to  the  first  but  revolving  in  an  opposite 
direction  and  at  a  greater  speed.  This  would  sweep  the  teeth 
clean  as  fast  as  they  emerged  lint-laden  from  the  hopper.  Thus 
was  the  famous  cotton-gin  devised.^* 

Miller,  who  now  married  Mrs.  Greene,  promptly  entered  into 
partnership  with  Whitney  not  only  to  manufacture  gins  but  also 
to  monopolize  the  business  of  operating  them,  charging  one-third 
of  the  cotton  as  toll.  They  even  ventured  into  the  buying  and 
selling  of  the  staple  on  a  large  scale.  Miller  wrote  Whitney  in 
1797,  for  example,  that  he  was  trying  to  raise  money  for  the  pur- 
chase of  thirty  or  forty  thousand  pounds  of  seed  cotton  at  the 
prevailing  price  of  three  cents,  and  was  projecting  a  trade  in  the 
lint  to  far-off  Tennessee."  By  this  time  the  partners  had  as 
many  as  thirty  gins  in  operation  at  various  points  in  Georgia; 
but  misfortune  had  already  begun  to  pursue  them.  Their  shop 
on  the  Greene  plantation  had  been  forced  by  a  mob  even  before 
their  patent  was  procured  in  1793,  and  Jesse  Bull,  Charles  M. 

"Denison  Olmstead,  Memoir  of  Eli  Whitney,  Esq.  (New  Haven,  1846), 
reprinted  in  J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  pp.  297-320.  M.  B. 
Hammond,  The  Cotton  Industry,  pp.  25,  26. 

"^American  Historical  Review.  IH,  104. 


158  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Lin  and  Edward  Lyons,  collaborating  near  Wrightsboro,  soon 
put  forth  an  improved  gin  in  which  saw-toothed  iron  discs  re- 
placed the  wire  points  of  the  Whitney  model.^^  Whitney  had 
now  returned  to  New  Haven  to  establish  a  gin  factory,  and  Mil- 
ler wrote  him  in  1794  urging  prompt  shipments  and  saying: 
"The  people  of  the  country  are  running  mad  for  them,  and  much 
can  be  said  to  justify  their  importunity.  When  the  present  crop 
is  harvested  there  will  be  a  real  property  of  at  least  fifty  thousand 
dollars  lying  useless  unless  we  can  enable  the  holders  to  bring  it 
to  market."  But  an  epidemic  prostrated  Whitney's  workmen 
that  year,  and  a  fire  destroyed  his  factory  in  1795.  Meanwhile 
rival  machines  were  appearing  in  the  market,  and  Whitney  and 
Miller  were  beginning  their  long  involvement  in  lawsuits.  Their 
overreaching  policy  of  monopolizing  the  operation  of  their  gins 
turned  public  sentiment  against  them  and  inclined  the  juries, 
particularly  in  Georgia,  to  decide  in  favor  of  their  opponents. 
Not  until  1807,  when  their  patent  was  on  the  point  of  expiring 
did  they  procure  a  vindication  in  the  Georgia  courts.  Mean- 
while a  grant  of  $50,000  from  the  legislature  of  South  Carolina 
to  extinguish  the  patent  right  in  that  state,  and  smaller  grants 
from  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee  did  little  more  than  counter- 
balance expenses.^'^  A  petition  which  Whitney  presented  to  Con- 
gress in  1812  for  a  renewal  of  his  expired  patent  was  denied, 
and  Whitney  turned  his  talents  to  the  manufacture  of  muskets. 
In  Georgia  the  contest  of  lawyers  in  the  courts  was  paralleled 
by  a  battle  of  advertisers  in  the  newspapers.  Thomas  Spaulding 
offered  to  supply  Joseph  Eve's  gins  from  the  Bahama  Islands  at 
fifty  guineas  each ;  ^^  and  Eve  himself  shortly  immigrated  to  Au- 
gusta to  contend  for  his  patent  rights  on  roller-gins,  for  some  of 
his  workmen  had  changed  his  model  in  such  a  way  as  to  increase 
the  speed,  and  had  put  their  rival  gins  upon  the  market.**  Among 
these  may  have  been  John  Currie,  who  offered  exclusive  county 
rights  at  $100  each  for  the  making,  using  and  vending  of  his 

"J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  pp.  289,  290,  293-295. 
"  M.  B.  Hammond,  "Correspondence  of  Eli  Whitney  relating  to  the  In- 
vention of  the  Cotton  Gin,"  in  the  American  Historical Review,lll,go-l27. 
^Columbian  Museum  (Savannah,  Ga.),  April  26,  1796. 
"J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  p.  281. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  159 

type  of  gins,^°  also  William  Longstreet  of  Augusta  who  offered 
to  sell  gins  of  his  own  devising  at  $150  each,^^  and  Robert  Wat- 
kins  of  the  short-lived  town  of  Petersburg,  Georgia,  who  de- 
nounced Longstreet  as  an  infringer  of  his  patent  and  advertised 
local  non-exclusive  rights  for  making  and  using  his  own  style  of 
gins  at  the  bargain  rate  of  sixty  dollars. ^^  All  of  these  were  de- 
scribed as  roller  gins ;  but  all  were  warranted  to  gin  upland  as 
well  as  sea-island  cotton.'^  By  the  year  1800  Miller  and  Whitney 
had  also  adopted  the  practice  of  selling  licenses  in  Georgia,  as  is 
indicated  by  an  advertisement  from  their  agent  at  Augusta. 
Meanwhile  ginners  were  calling  for  negro  boys  and  girls  ten  or 
twelve  years  old  on  hire  to  help  at  the  machines ;  ^*  and  were  of- 
fering to  gin  for  a  toll  of  one-fifth  of  the  cotton."^  As  years 
passed  the  rates  were  still  further  lowered.  At  Augusta  in  1809, 
for  example,  cotton  was  ginned  and  packed  in  square  bales  of 
350  pounds  at  a  cost  of  $1.50  per  hundredweight.^* 

The  upland  people  of  Georgia  and  the  tv/o  Carolinas  made 
prompt  response  to  the  new  opportunity.  By  1800  even  Tennes- 
see had  joined  the  movement,  and  a  gin  of  such  excellence  was 
erected  near  Nashville  that  the  proprietors  exacted  fees  from  vis- 
itors wishing  to  view  it;^^  and  by  1802  not  only  were  consign- 
ments being  shipped  to  New  Orleans  for  the  European  market, 
but  part  of  the  crop  was  beginning  to  be  peddled  in  wagons  to 
Kentucky  and  in  pole-boats  on  the  Ohio  as  far  as  Pittsburg,  for 
the  domestic  making  of  homespun.-*  In  1805  John  Baird  ad- 
vertised at  Nashville  that,  having  received  a  commission  from 
correspondents  at  Baltimore,  he  was  ready  to  buy  as  much  as 
one  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  lint  at  fifteen  cents  a 
pound.^^  In  the  settlements  about  Vicksburg  in  the  Mississippi 
Territory,  cotton  was  not  only  the  staple  product  by  1809,  but  was 

*•  Augusta,  Ga.,  Chronicle,  Dec.  10,  1796. 

*^ Southern  Sentinel  (Augusta,  Ga.),  July  14,  1796. 

"Ibid.,  Feb.  7,  1797;  Augusta  Chronicle,  June  10,  1797. 

"  Augusta  Chronicle,  Dec.  13,  1800. 

"Southern  Sentinel,  April  23,  1795. 

"  Augusta  Chronicle,  Jan.  16,  1796. 

"Ibid.,  Sept.  9,  1809. 

"Tennessee  Gazette  (Nashville,  Tenn.),  April  9,  1800. 

"  F.  A.  Michaux  in  Thwaites,  ed.,  Early  Western  Travels,  III,  252. 

**  Tennessee  Gazette,  March  27,  1805. 


i6o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

also  for  the  time  being  the  medium  of  exchange,  while  in  Arkan- 
sas the  squatters  were  debarred  from  the  new  venture  only  by  the 
poverty  which  precluded  them  from  getting  gins.^°  In  Virginia 
also,  in  such  of  the  southerly  counties  as  had  summers  long 
enough  for  the  crop  to  ripen  in  moderate  security,  cotton  growing 
became  popular.  But  for  the  time  being  these  were  merely  an 
out-lying  fringe  of  cotton's  principality.  The  great  rush  to  cot- 
ton growing  prior  to  the  war  of  1812  occurred  in  the  Carolina- 
Georgia  Piedmont,  with  its  trend  of  intensity  soon  pointing 
south-westward. 

A  shrewd  contemporary  observer  found  special  reason  to  re- 
joice that  the  new  staple  required  no  large  capital  and  involved 
no  exposure  to  disease.  Rice  and  indigo,  said  he,  had  offered 
the  poorer  whites,  except  the  few  employed  as  overseers,  no 
livelihood  "without  the  degradation  of  working  with  slaves" ;  but 
cotton,  stimulating  and  elevating  these  people  into  the  rank  of 
substantial  farmers,  tended  "to  fill  the  country  with  an  independ- 
ent industrious  yeomanry."  ^^  True  as  this  was,  it  did  not  mean 
that  producers  on  a  plantation  scale  were  at  a  disadvantage. 
Settlers  of  every  type,  in  fact,  adopted  the  crop  as  rapidly  as 
they  could  get  seed  and  ginning  facilities,  and  newcomers  poured 
in  apace  to  share  the  prosperity. 

The  exports  mounted  swiftly,  but  the  world's  market  readily 
absorbed  them  at  rising  prices  until  1801  when  the  short-staple 
output  was  about  forty  million  pounds  and  the  price  at  the  ports 
about  forty-four  cents  a  pound.  A  trade  in  slaves  promptly 
arose  to  meet  the  eager  demand  for  labor;  and  migrants  coming 
from  the  northward  and  the  rice  coast  brought  additional  slaves 
in  their  train.  General  Wade  Hampton  was  the  first  conspicu- 
ous one  of  these.  With  the  masterful  resolution  which  always 
characterized  him,  he  carried  his  great  gang  from  the  seaboard 
to  the  neighborhood  of  Columbia  and  there  in  1799  raised  six 
hundred  of  the  relatively  light  weight  bales  of  that  day  on  as 

^"F.  Cuming.  Tour  to  the  Western  Country  (Pittsburg,  1810),  in 
Thwaites,  ed.,  Early  Western  Travels,  IV,  272,  280,  298. 

'^  David  Ramsay,  History  of  South  Carolina  (Charleston,  1808),  II,  44S-9. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  i6i 

many  acres.^^  His  crop  was  reckoned  to  have  a  value  of  some 
ninety  thousand  dollars.^^ 

The  general  run  of  the  upland  cultivators,  however,  continued 
as  always  to  operate  on  a  minor  scale ;  and  the  high  cost  of  trans- 
portation caused  them  generally  to  continue  producing  miscel- 
laneous goods  to  meet  their  domestic  needs.  The  diversified 
regime  is  pictured  in  Michaux's  description  of  a  North  Carolina 
plantation  in  1802 :  "In  eight  hundred  acres  of  which  it  is  com- 
posed, a  hundred  and  fifty  are  cultivated  in  cotton,  Indian  com, 
wheat  and  oats,  and  dunged  annually,  which  is  a  great  degree  of 
perfection  in  the  present  state  of  agriculture  in  this  part  of  the 
country.  Independent  of  this  [the  proprietor]  has  built  in  his 
yard  several  machines  that  the  same  current  of  water  puts  in 
motion ;  they  consist  of  a  corn  mill,  a  saw  mill,  another  to  sepa- 
rate the  cotton  seeds,  a  tan-house,  a  tan-mill,  a  distillery  to  make 
peach  brandy,  and  a  small  forge  where  the  inhabitants  of  the 
country  go  to  have  their  horses  shod.  Seven  or  eight  negro 
slaves  are  employed  in  the  different  departments,  some  of  which 
are  only  occupied  at  certain  periods  of  the  year.  Their  wives 
are  employed  under  the  direction  of  the  mistress  in  manufactur- 
ing cotton  and  Hnen  for  the  use  of  the  family."  ^* 

The  speed  of  the  change  to  a  general  slaveholding  regime  in 
the  uplands  may  easily  be  exaggerated.  In  those  counties  of 
South  Carolina  which  lay  wholly  within  the  Piedmont  the  fifteen 
thousand  slaves  on  hand  in  1790  formed  slightly  less  than  one- 
fifth  of  the  gross  population  there.  By  1800  the  number  of 
slaves  increased  by  seventy  per  cent.,  and  formed  nearly  one- 
fourth  of  the  gross;  in  the  following  decade  they  increased  by 
ninety  per  cent.,  until  they  comprised  one-third  of  the  whole; 
from  1810  to  1820  their  number  grew  at  the  smaller  rate  of  fifty 
per  cent,  and  reached  two-fifths  of  the  whole ;  and  by  1830,  with 
a  further  increase  of  forty  per  cent,  the  number  of  slaves  al- 
most overtook  that  of  the  whites.  The  slaves  were  then  counted 
at  101,982,  the  whites  at  115,318,  and  the  free  negroes  at  2,115. 

*'  Seabrook,  pp.  16,  17. 

'^  Note  made  by  L.  C.  Draper  from  the  Louisville,  Ga.,  Gazette,  Draper 
MSS.,  series  VV,  vol.  XVI,  p.  84,  Wisconsin  Historical  Society. 
**F.  A.  Michaux  in  Thwaites,  ed.,  Early  Western  Travels,  III,  292. 


i62  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

In  Georgia  the  slave  proportion  grew  more  rapidly  than  this  be- 
cause it  was  much  smaller  at  the  outset;  in  North  Carolina,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  rise  was  less  marked  because  cotton  never 
throve  there  so  greatly. 

In  its  industrial  requirements  cotton  was  much  closer  to  to- 
bacco than  to  rice  or  sugar.  There  was  no  vital  need  for  large 
units  of  production.  On  soils  of  the  same  quality  the  farmer 
with  a  single  plow,  if  his  family  did  the  hoeing  and  picking, 
was  on  a  similar  footing  with  the  greatest  planter  as  to  the  output 
per  hand,  and  in  similar  case  as  to  cost  of  production  per  bale. 
The  scale  of  cotton-belt  slaveholdings  rose  not  because  free  labor 
was  unsuited  to  the  industry  but  because  slaveholders  from  the 
outside  moved  in  to  share  the  opportunity  and  because  every 
prospering  non-slaveholder  and  small  slaveholder  was  eager  to 
enlarge  his  personal  scale  of  operations.  Those  who  could  save 
generally  bought  slaves  with  their  savings ;  those  who  could  not, 
generally  continued  to  raise  cotton  nevertheless. 

The  gross  cotton  output,  in  which  the  upland  crop  greatly  and 
increasingly  outweighed  that  of  the  sea-island  staple,  rapidly  ad- 
vanced from  about  forty-eight  million  pounds  in  1801  to  about 
eighty  million  in  1806;  then  it  was  kept  stationary  by  the  em- 
bargo and  the  war  of  1812,  until  the  return  of  peace  and  open 
trade  sent  it  up  by  leaps  and  bounds  again.  The  price  dropped 
abruptly  from  an  average  of  forty-four  cents  in  the  New  York 
market  in  1801  to  nineteen  cents  in  1802,  but  there  was  no  fur- 
ther decline  until  the  beginning  of  the  war  with  Great 
Britain,^^ 

Cotton's  absorption  of  the  people's  exiergies  already  tended  to 
become  excessive.  In  1790  South  Carolina  had  sent  abroad  a 
surplus  of  corn  from  the  back  country  measuring  well  over  a 
hundred  thousand  bushels.  But  by  1804  corn  brought  in  brigs 
was  being  advertised  in  Savannah  to  meet  the  local  deficit ;  ^^  and 
in  the  spring  of  1807  there  seems  to  have  been  a  dearth  of  grain 
in  the  Piedmont  itself.  At  that  time  an  editorial  in  the  Augusta 
Chronicle  ran  as  follows:     "A  correspondent  would  recommend 

**  M.  B.  Hammond,  The  Cotton  Industry,  table  following  p.  357. 
"Savannah  Museum,  April  11,  1804. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  163 

to  the  planters  of  Georgia,  now  the 'season  is  opening,  to  raise 
more  corn  and  less  cotton.  .  .  .  The  dear  bought  experience  of 
the  present  season  should  teach  us  to  be  more  provident  for  the 
future."  ^^  Under  the  conditions  of  the  time  this  excess  at  the 
expense  of  grain  was  likely  to  correct  itself  at  once,  for  men  and 
their  draught  animals  must  eat  to  work,  and  in  the  prevailing 
lack  of  transportation  facilities  food  could  not  be  brought  from 
a  distance  at  a  price  within  reach.  The  systematic  basis  of  in- 
dustry was  the  production,  whether  by  planters  or  farmers,  of 
such  food  as  was  locally  needed  and  such  supplies  of  cloth  to- 
gether with  such  other  outfit  as  it  was  economical  to  make  at 
home,  and  the  devotion  of  all  further  efforts  to  the  making  of 
cotton. 

Coincident  with  the  rise  of  cotton  culture  in  the  Atlantic  states 
was  that  of  sugar  in  the  delta  lands  of  southeastern  Louisiana. 
In  this  triangular  district,  whose  apex  is  the  junction  of  the  Red 
and  Mississippi  rivers,  the  country  is  even  more  amphibious  than 
the  rice  coast.  Everywhere  in  fact  the  soil  is  too  waterlogged  for 
tillage  except  close  along  the  Father  of  Waters  himself  and  his 
present  or  aforetime  outlets.  Settlement  must,  therefore,  take  the 
form  of  strings  of  plantations  and  farms  on  these  elevated 
riparian  strips,  with  the  homesteads  fronting  the  streams  and  the 
fields  stretching  a  few  hundred  or  at  most  a  few  thousand  yards 
to  the  rear;  and  every  new  establishment  required  its  own  levee 
against  the  flood.  So  long  as  there  were  great  areas  of  unre- 
stricted flood-plain  above  Vicksburg  to  impound  the  freshets  and 
lower  their  crests,  the  levees  below  required  no  great  height  or 
strength ;  but  the  tasks  of  reclamation  were  at  best  arduous  enough 
to  make  rapid  expansion  depend  upon  the  spur  of  great  expecta- 
tions. 

The  original  colony  of  the  French,  whose  descendants  called 
themselves  Creoles,  was  clustered  about  the  town  of  New  Or- 
leans. A  short  distance  up  stream  the  river  banks  in  the  par- 
ishes of  St.  Charles  and  St.  John  the  Baptist  were  settled  at  an 
early  period  by  German  immigrants ;  thence  the  settlements  were 
extended  after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  first  by 

"Reprinted  in  the  Farmer's  Gazette  (Sparta,  Ga.),  April  11,  1807. 


i64  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

I 

French  exiles  from  Acadia,  next  by  Creole  planters,  and  finally 
by  Anglo-Americans  who  took  their  locations  mostly  above  Baton 
Rouge.  As  to  the  westerly  bayous,  the  initial  settlers  were  in 
general  Acadian  small  farmers.  Negro  slaves  were  gradually 
introduced  into  all  these  districts,  though  the  Creoles,  who  were 
the  most  vigorous  of  the  Latin  elements,  were  the  chief  importers 
of  them.  Their  numbers  at  the  close  of  the  colonial  period 
equalled  those  of  the  whites,  and  more  than  a  tenth  of  them  had 
been  emancipated. 

The  people  in  the  later  eighteenth  century  were  drawing  their 
livelihoods  variously  from  hunting,  fishing,  cattle  raising  and  In- 
dian trading,  from  the  growing  of  grain  and  vegetables  for  sale 
to  the  boatmen  and  townsmen,  and  from  the  production  of  indigo 
on  a  somewhat  narrow  margin  of  profit  as  the  principal  export 
crop.  Attempts  at  sugar  production  had  been  made  in  1725  and 
again  in  1762,  but  the  occurrence  of  winter  frosts  before  the  cane 
was  fully  ripe  discouraged  the  enterprise ;  and  in  most  years  no 
more  cane  was  raised  than  would  meet  the  local  demand  for 
sirup  and  rum.  In  the  closing  decades  of  the  century,  however, 
worm  pests  devoured  the  indigo  leaves  with  such  thoroughness 
as  to  make  harvesting  futile ;  and  thereby  the  planters  were  driven 
to  seek  an  alternative  staple.  Projects  of  cotton  were  baffled  by 
the  lack  of  a  gin,  and  recourse  was  once  more  had  to  sugar.  A 
Spaniard  named  Solis  had  built  a  small  mill  below  New  Orleans 
in  1 791  and  was  making  sugar  with  indifferent  success  when,  in 
1794-1795,  Etienne  de  Bore,  a  prominent  Creole  whose  estate 
lay  just  above  the  town,  bought  a  supply  of  seed  cane  from 
Solis,  planted  a  large  field  with  it,  engaged  a  professional  sugar 
maker,  and  installed  grinding  and  boiling  apparatus  against  the 
time  of  harvest.  The  day  set  for  the  test  brought  a  throng  of 
onlookers  whose  joy  broke  forth  at  the  sight  of  crystals  in  the 
cooling  fluid — for  the  good  fortune  of  Bore,  who  received  some 
$12,000  for  his  crop  of  1796,  was  an  earnest  of  general  prosperity. 

Other  men  of  enterprise  followed  the  resort  to  sugar  when  op- 
portunity permitted  them  to  get  seed  cane,  mills  and  cauldrons. 
In  spite  of  a  dearth  of  both  capital  and  labor  and  in  spite  of  war- 
time restrictions  on  maritime  commerce,  the  sugar  estates  within 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  165 

nine  years  reached  the  number  of  eighty-one,  a  good  many  of 
which  were  doubtless  the  property  of  San  Domingan  refugees  who 
were  now  pouring  into  the  province  with  whatever  slaves  and 
other  movables  they  had  been  able  to  snatch  from  the  black  revo- 
lution. Some  of  these  had  fled  first  to  Cuba  and  after  a  sojourn 
there,  during  which  they  found  the  Spanish  government  oppres- 
sive, removed  afresh  to  Louisiana.  As  late  as  1809  the  year's 
immigration  from  the  two  islands  was  reported  by  the  mayor  of 
New  Orleans  to  the  governor  of  Louisiana  at  2,731  whites  and 
3,102  free  persons  of  color,  together  with  3,226  slaves  warranted 
as  the  property  of  the  free  immigrants.^*  The  volume  of  the 
San  Domingan  influx  from  first  to  last  was  great  enough  to 
double  the  French-speaking  population.  The  newcomers  settled 
mainly  in  the  New  Orleans  neighborhood,  the  whites  among 
them  promptly  merging  themselves  with  the  original  Creole  pop- 
ulation. By  reason  of  their  previous  familiarity  with  sugar  cul- 
ture they  gave  additional  stimulus  to  that  industry. 

Meanwhile  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  by  the  United  States  in 
1803  had  transformed  the  political  destinies  of  the  community 
and  considerably  changed  its  economic  prospects.  After  pro- 
hibiting in  1804  the  importation  into  the  territory  of  any  slaves 
who  had  been  brought  from  Africa  since  1798,  Congress  passed 
a  new  act  in  1805  which,  though  probably  intended  to  continue 
the  prohibition,  was  interpreted  by  the  attorney-general  to  per- 
mit the  inhabitants  to  bring  in  any  slaves  whatever  from  any 
place  within  the  United  States.^^  This  news  was  published  with 
delight  by  the  New  Orleans  newspapers  at  the  end  of  February, 
1806 ;  ^°  and  from  that  time  until  the  end  of  the  following  year 
their  columns  bristled  with  advertisements  of  slaves  from  African 
cargoes  "just  arrived  from  Charleston."  Of  these  the  follow- 
ing, issued  by  the  firm  of  Kenner  and  Henderson,  June  24,  1806, 
is  an  example:  "The  subscribers  offer  for  sale  74  prime  slaves 
of  the  Fantee  nation  on  board  the  schooner  Reliance,  I.  Potter 

*^ Moniteur  de  la  Louisiane  (New  Orleans),  Jan.  27  and  Mch.  24,  1810. 

"'W.  E.  B.  DuBois,  Suppression  of  the  African  Slave  Trade,  pp.  87-90. 
The  acts  of  1804  and  1805  are  printed  in  B,  P.  Poore,  Charters  and  Consti- 
tutions (Washington,  1877),  I.  691-697. 

*^  Louisiana  Gazette,  Feb.  28,  1806. 


i66  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

master,  from  Charleston,  now  lying  opposite  this  city.  The  sales 
will  commence  on  the  25th.  inst,  at  9  o'clock  A.M.,  and  will  con- 
tinue from  day  to  day  until  the  whole  is  sold.*^  Good  endorsed 
notes  will  be  taken  in  payment,  payable  the  ist.  of  January,  1807. 
Also  [for  sale]  the  above  mentioned  schooner  Reliance,  burthen 
about  60  tons,  completely  fitted  for  an  African  voyage." 

Upon  the  prohibition  of  the  African  trade  at  large  in  1808,  the 
slave  demand  of  the  sugar  parishes  was  diverted  to  the  Atlantic 
plantation  states  where  it  served  to  advertise  the  Louisiana  boom. 
Wade  Hampton  of  South  Carolina  responded  in  181 1  by  carry- 
ing a  large  force  of  his  slaves  to  establish  a  sugar  estate  of  his 
own  at  the  head  of  Bayou  Lafourche,  and  a  few  others  followed 
his  example.  The  radical  difference  of  the  industrial  methods 
in  sugar  from  those  in  the  other  staples,  however,  together  with 
the  predominance  of  the  French  language,  the  Catholic  religion 
and  a  Creole  social  regime  in  the  district  most  favorable  for  sugar, 
made  Anglo-Americans  chary  of  the  enterprise ;,  and  the  revival 
of  cotton  prices  after  181 5  strengthened  the  tendency  of  migrat- 
ing planters  to  stay  within  the  cotton  latitudes.  Many  of  those 
who  settled  about  Baton  Rouge  and  on  the  Red  River  with  cot- 
ton as  their  initial  concern  shifted  to  sugar  at  the  end  of  the 
'twenties,  however,  in  response  to  the  tariff  of  1828  which  height- 
ened sugar  prices  at  a  time  when  the  cotton  market  was  depressed. 
This  was  in  response,  also,  to  the  introduction  of  ribbon  cane 
which  matured  earlier  than  the  previously  used  Malabar  and 
Otaheite  varieties  and  could  accordingly  be  grown  in  a  some- 
what higher  latitude. 

The  territorial  spread  was  mainly  responsible  for  the  sudden 
advance  of  the  number  of  sugar  estates  from  308  operating  in 
1827,  estimated  as  employing  21,000  able-bodied  slaves  and  hav- 
ing a  gross  value  of  $34,000,000,  to  691  plantations  in  1830,*^  with 
some  36,000  working  slaves  and  a  gross  value  of  $50,000,000. 
At  this  time  the  output  was  at  the  rate  of  about  75,000  hogsheads 
containing  1,000  pounds  of  sugar  each,  together  with  some  forty 
or  fifty  gallons  of  molasses  per  hogshead  as  a  by-product.    Lou- 

"  Louisiana  Gazette,  July  4,  1806. 
"  DeBow's  Reznew,  I,  55. 


THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  COTTON  167 

isiana  was  at  this  time  supplying  about  half  of  the  whole  coun- 
try's consumption  of  sugar  and  bade  fair  to  meet  the  whole  de- 
mand ere  long.*^  The  reduction  of  protective  tariff  rates,  com- 
ing simultaneously  with  a  rise  of  cotton  prices,  then  checked  the 
spread  of  the  sugar  industry,  and  the  substitution  of  steam  en- 
gines for  horse  power  in  grinding  the  cane  caused  some  consoli- 
dation of  estates.  In  1842  accordingly,  when  the  slaves  num- 
bered 50,740  and  the  sugar  crop  filled  140,000  hogsheads,  the 
plantations  were  but  668.**  The  raising  of  the  tariff  anew  in 
that  year  increased  the  plantations  to  762  in  1845  ^"d  they 
reached  their  maximum  number  of  1,536  in  1849,  when  more 
than  half  of  their  mills  were  driven  by  steam  *^  and  their  slaves 
numbered  probably  somewhat  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  of 
all  ages.*^  Thereafter  the  recovery  of  the  cotton  market  from 
the  severe  depression  of  the  early  'forties  caused  a  strong  ad- 
vance in  slave  prices  which  again  checked  the  sugar  spread,  while 
the  introduction  of  vacuum  pans  and  other  improvements  in  ap- 
paratus "  promoted  further  consolidations.  The  number  of  es- 
states  accordingly  diminished  to  1,298  in  1859,  ^^  9^7  o^  which 
the  mills  were  steam  driven,  and  on  52  of  which  the  extraction 
and  evaporation  of  the  sugar  was  done  by  one  sort  or  another 
of  the  newly  invented  devices.  The  gross  number  of  slaves  in 
the  sugar  parishes  was  nearly  doubled  between  1830  and  1850, 
but  in  the  final  ante-bellum  decade  it  advanced  only  at  about  the 
rate  of  natural  increase.*®  The  sugar  output  advanced  to  200,- 
000  hogsheads  in  1844  and  to  450,000  in  1853.  Bad  seasons  then 
reduced  it  to  74,000  in  1856;  and  the  previous  maximum  was  not 
equaled  in  the  remaining  ante-bellum  years.*^     The  liability  of 

**  V.  Debouchel,  Histoire  de  la  Louisiane  (New  Orleans,  1851),  pp.  151  ff. 
"  E.  J.  Forstall,  Agricultural  Productions  of  Louisiana  (New  Orleans, 

184s). 

*^  P.  A.  Champonier,  Statement  of  the  Sugar  Crop  Made  tn  Louisiana 
(New  Orleans,  annual,  1848-1859). 

■"DeBow,  in  the  Compendium  of  the  Seventh  Census,  p.  94,  estimated  the 
sugar  plantation   slaves   at   150,000;   but  this   is   clearly  an  overestimate. 

■"  Some  of  these  are  described  by  Judah  P.  Benjamin  in  DeBoiv's  Re- 
view, II,  322-345. 

**/.  e.  from  150,000  to  180,000. 
_  *'  The  crop  of  1853,  indeed,  was  not  exceeded  until  near  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 


i68  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  crop  to  damage  from  drought  and  early  frost,  and  to  de- 
struction from  the  outpouring  of  the  Mississippi  through  cre- 
vasses in  the  levees,  explains  the  fluctuations  in  the  yield.  Out- 
side of  Louisiana  the  industry  took  no  grip  except  on  the  Brazos 
River  in  Texas,  where  in  1858  thirty-seven  plantations  produced 
about  six  thousand  hogsheads. ^° 

In  Louisiana  in  the  banner  year  1853,  with  perfect  weather  and 
no  crevasses,  each  of  some  50,000  able-bodied  field  hands  culti- 
vated, besides  the  incidental  food  crops,  about  five  acres  of  cane 
on  the  average  and  produced  about  nine  hogsheads  of  sugar  and 
three  hundred  gallons  of  molasses  per  head.  On  certain  spe- 
cially favored  estates,  indeed,  the  product  reached  as  much  as  fif- 
teen hogsheads  per  hand.^^  In  the  total  of  1407  fully  equipped 
plantations  103  made  less  than  one  hundred  hogsheads  each,  while 
forty  produced  a  thousand  hogsheads  or  more.  That  year's  out- 
put, however,  was  nearly  twice  the  size  of  the  average  crop  in 
the  period.  A  dozen  or  more  proprietors  owned  two  or  more  es- 
tates each,  some  of  which  were  on  the  largest  scale,  while  at  the 
other  extreme  several  dozen  farmers  who  had  no  mills  of  their 
own  sent  cane  from  their  few  acres  to  be  worked  up  in  the  spare 
time  of  some  obliging  neighbor's  mill.  In  general  the  bulk  of 
the  crop  was  made  on  plantations  with  cane  fields  ranging  from 
rather  more  than  a  hundred  to  somewhat  less  than  a  thousand 
acres,  and  with  each  acre  producing  in  an  ordinary  year  some- 
what more  than  a  hogshead  of  sugar. 

Until  about  1850  the  sugar  district  as  well  as  the  cotton  belt 
was  calling  for  labor  from  whatever  source  it  might  be  had ;  but 
whereas  the  uplands  had  work  for  people  of  both  races  and  all 
conditions,  the  demand  of  the  delta  lands,  to  which  the  sugar 
crop  was  confined,  was  almost  wholly  for  negro  slaves.  The 
only  notable  increase  in  the  rural  white  population  of  the  district 
came  through  the  fecundity  of  the  small-farming  Acadians  who 
had  little  to  do  with  sugar  culture. 

"''  P.  A.   Champonier,  Statement  of  the  Sugar  Crop  .  .  .  in  1858-1859, 
p.  40. 
^^DeBoii/s  Review,  XIV,  199,  200, 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT 

THE  flow  of  population  into  the  distant  interior  followed 
the  lines  of  least  resistance  and  greatest  opportunity.  In 
the  earlier  decades  these  lay  chiefly  in  the  Virginia  lati- 
tudes. The  Indians  there  were  yielding,  the  mountains  afforded 
passes  thither,  and  the  climate  permitted  the  familiar  tobacco  in- 
dustry. The  Shenandoah  Valley  had  been  occupied  mainly  by 
Scotch-Irish  and  German  small  farmers  from  Pennsylvania ;  but 
the  glowing  reports,  which  the  long  hunters  brought  and  the  land 
speculators  spread  from  beyond  the  further  mountains,  made 
Virginians  to  the  manner  born  resolve  to  compete  with  the  men 
of  the  backwoods  for  a  share  of  the  Kentucky  lands.  During 
and  after  the  war  for  independence  they  threaded  the  gorges, 
some  with  slaves  but  most  without.  Here  and  there  one  found 
a  mountain  glade  so  fertile  that  he  made  it  his  permanent  home, 
while  his  fellows  pushed  on  to  the  greater  promised  land.  Some 
of  these  emerging  upon  a  country  of  low  and  uniform  hills, 
closely  packed  and  rounded  like  the  backs  of  well-fed  pigs  crowd- 
ing to  the  trough,  staked  out  their  claims,  set  up  their  cabins, 
deadened  their  trees,  and  planted  wheat.  Others  went  on  to  the 
gently  rolling  country  about  Lexington,  let  the  luxuriant  native 
bluegrass  wean  them  from  thoughts  of  tobacco,  and  became 
breeders  of  horses  for  evermore.  A  few,  settling  on  the  south- 
erly edge  of  the  bluegrass,  mainly  in  and  about  Garrard  County, 
raised  hemp  on  a  plantation  scale.  The  rest,  resisting  all  these 
allurements,  pressed  on  still  further  to  the  pennyroyal  country 
where  tobacco  would  have  no  rival.  While  thousands  made  the 
whole  journey  overland,  still  more  made  use  of  the  Ohio  River 
for  the  later  stages.  The  adjutant  at  Fort  Harmar  counted  in 
seven  months  of  1786-1787,  177  boats  descending  the  Ohio,  car- 

169 


170  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

rying  2,689  persons,  1,333  horses,  766  cattle,  102  wagons  and  one 
phaeton,  while  still  others  passed  by  night  uncounted.^  The  fam- 
ily establishments  in  Kentucky  were  always  on  a  smaller  scale, 
on  an  average,  than  those  in  Virginia.  Yet  the  people  migrating 
to  the  more  fertile  districts  tended  to  maintain  and  even  to 
heighten  the  spirit  of  gentility  and  the  pride  of  type  which  they 
carried  as  part  of  their  heritage.  The  laws  erected  by  the  com- 
munity were  favorable  to  the  slaveholding  regime ;  but  after  the 
first  decades  of  the  migration  period,  the  superior  attractions  of 
the  more  southerly  latitudes  for  plantation  industry  checked 
Kentucky's  receipt  of  slaves. 

The  wilderness  between  the  Ohio  and  the  Great  Lakes,  mean- 
while, was  attracting  Virginia  and  Carolina  emigrants  as  well  as 
those  from  the  northerly  states.  The  soil  there  was  excellent, 
and  some  districts  were  suited  to  tobacco  culture.  The  Ordi- 
nance of  1787,  however,  though  it  was  not  strictly  enforced, 
•made  slaveholdings  north  of  the  Ohio  negligible  from  any  but 
an  antiquarian  point  of  vieW. 

The  settlement  of  Tennessee  was  parallel,  though  subsequent, 
to  that  of  the  Shenandoah  and  Kentucky.  The  eastern  intra- 
montane  valley,  broad  and  fertile  but  unsuited  to  the  staple  crops, 
gave  homes  to  thousands  of  small  farmers,  while  the  Nashville 
basin  drew  planters  of  both  tobacco  and  cotton,  and  the  counties 
along  the  western  and  southern  borders  of  the  state  made  cotton 
their  one  staple.  The  scale  of  slaveholdings  in  middle  and  west- 
ern Tennessee,  while  superior  to  that  in  Kentucky,  was  never  so 
great  as  those  which  prevailed  in  Virginia  and  the  lower  South. 

Missouri,  whose  adaptation  to  the  southern  staples  was  much 
poorer,  came  to  be  colonized  in  due  time  partly  by  planters  from 
Kentucky  but  mostly  by  farmers  from  many  quarters,  including 
after  the  first  decades  a  large  number  of  Germans,  some  of  whom 
entered  through  the  eastern  ports  and  others  through  New  Or- 
leans. 

This  great  central  region  as  a  whole  acquired  an  agricultural 
regime  blending  the  features  of  the  two  national  extremes.  The 
staples  were  prominent  but  never  quite  paramount.     Corn  and 

^Massachusetts  Centinel  (Boston),  July  21,  1787. 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  171 

wheat,  cattle  and  hogs  were  produced  regularly  nearly  every- 
where, not  on  a  mere  home  consumption  basis,  but  for  sale  in  the 
cotton  belt  and  abroad.  This  diversification  caused  the  region 
to  wane  in  the  esteem  of  the  migrating  planters  as  soon  as  the 
Alabama-Mississippi  country  was  opened  for  settlement. 

Preliminaries  of  the  movement  into  the  Gulf  region  had  begun 
as  early  as  1768,  when  a  resident  of  Pensacola  noted  that  a  group 
of  Virginians  had  been  prospecting  thereabouts  with  such  favor- 
able results  that  five  of  them  had  applied  for  a  large  grant  of 
lands,  pledging  themselves  to  bring  in  a  hundred  slaves  and  a 
large  number  of  cattle.^  In  1777  William  Bartram  met  a  group 
of  migrants  journeying  from  Georgia  to  settle  on  the  lower 
course  of  the  Alabama  River;  ^  and  in  1785  a  citizen  of  Augusta 
wrote  that  "a  vast  number"  of  the  upland  settlers  were  removing 
toward  the  Mississippi  in  consequence  of  the  relinquishment  of 
Natchez  by  the  Spaniards.*  But  these  were  merely  forerunners. 
Alabama  in  particular,  which  comprises  for  the  most  part  the 
basin  draining  into  Mobile  Bay,  could  have  no  safe  market  for 
its  produce  until  Spain  was  dispossessed  of  the  outlet.  The  tak- 
ing of  Mobile  by  the  United  States  as  an  episode  of  the  war  of 
1812,  and  the  simultaneous  breaking  of  the  Indian  strength,  re- 
moved the  obstacles.  The  influx  then  rose  to  immense  propor- 
tions. The  roads  and  rivers  became  thronged,  and  the  federal 
agents  began  to  sell  homesteads  on  a  scale  which  made  the  "land 
office  business"  proverbial.^ 

The  Alabama-Mississippi  population  rose  from  40,000  in  round 
numbers  in  1810  to  200,000  in  1820,  445,000  in  1830,  965,000  in 
1840,  1,377,000  in  1850,  and  1,660,000  in  i860,  while  the  propor- 
tion of  slaves  advanced  from  forty  to  forty-seven  per  cent.  In 
the  same  period  the  tide  flowed  on  into  the  cotton  lands  of  Ar- 
kansas and  Louisiana  and  eventually  into  Texas.  Florida  alone 
of  the  newer  southern  areas  was  left  in  relative  neglect  by  rea- 
son of  the  barrenness  of  her  soil.     The  states  and  territories 

"Boston,  Mass,  Chronicle,  Aug.  1-7,  1768. 

'William  Bartram,  Travels  (London,  1792),  p.  441. 

*  South  Carolina  Gazette,  May  26,  1785. 

'C.  F.  Emerick,  "The  Credit  System  and  the  Public  Domain,"  in  the 
Vanderbilt  University  Southern  History  Publications,  no.  3  (Nashville, 
Tenn.,  1899). 


172  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

from  Alabama  and  Tennessee  westward  increased  their  propor- 
tion of  the  whole  country's  cotton  output  from  one-sixteenth  in 
1811  to  one-third  in  1820,  one-half  before  1830,  nearly  two-thirds 
in  1840,  and  quite  three- fourths  in  i860;  and  all  this  was  in  spite 
of  continued  and  substantial  enlargements  of  the  eastern  output. 
In  the  western  cotton  belt  the  lands  most  highly  esteemed  in 
the  ante-bellum  period  lay  in  two  main  areas,  both  of  which  had 
soils  far  more  fertile  and  lasting  than  any  in  the  interior  of  the 
Atlantic  states.  One  of  these  formed  a  crescent  across  south- 
central  Alabama,  with  its  western  horn  reaching  up  the  Tombig- 
bee  River  into  northeastern  Mississippi.  Its  soil  of  loose  black 
loam  was  partly  forested,  partly  open,  and  densely  matted  with 
grass  and  weeds  except  where  limestone  cropped  out  on  the  hill 
crests  and  where  prodigious  cane  brakes  choked  the  valleys.  The 
area  was  locally  known  as  the  prairies  or  the  black  belt.^  The 
process  of  opening  it  for  settlement  was  begun  by  Andrew  Jack- 
son's defeat  of  the  Creeks  in  1814  but  was  not  completed  until 
some  twenty  years  afterward.  The  other  and  greater  tract  ex- 
tended along  both  sides  of  the  Mississippi  River  from  northern 
Tennessee  and  Arkansas  to  the  mouth  of  the  Red  River.  It  com- 
prised the  broad  alluvial  bottoms,  together  with  occasional  hill 
districts  of  rich  loam,  especially  notable  among  the  latter  of  which 
were  those  lying  about  Natchez  and  Vicksburg.  The  southern  end 
of  this  area  was  made  available  first,  and  the  hills  preceded  the 
delta  in  popularity  for  cotton  culture.  It  was  not  until  the  mid- 
dle thirties  that  the  broadest  expanse  of  the  bottoms,  the  Yazoo- 
Mississippi  Delta,  began  to  receive  its  great  influx.  The  rest  of 
the  western  cotton  belt  had  soils  varying  through  much  the  same 
range  as  those  of  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas.  Except  in  the 
bottoms,  where  the  planters  themselves  did  most  of  the  pioneer- 
ing, the  choicer  lands  of  the  whole  district  were  entered  by  a  pell- 
mell  throng  of  great  planters,  lesser  planters  and  small  farmers, 
with  the  farmers  usually  a  little  in  the  lead  and  the  planters  ready 
to  buy  them  out  of  specially  rich  lands.    Farmers  refusing  to  sell 

'This  use  of  the  term  "black  belt"  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  other 
and  more  general  application  of  it  to  such  areas  in  the  South  at  large 
as  have  a  majority  of  negroes  in  their  population. 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  173 

might  by  their  own  thrift  shortly  rise  into  the  planter  class ;  or 

if  they  sold  their  homesteads  at  high  prices  they  might  buy 
slaves  with  the  proceeds  and  remove  to  become  planters  in  still 
newer  districts. 

The  process  was  that  which  had  already  been  exemplified 
abundantly  in  the  eastern  cotton  belt.  A  family  arriving  per- 
haps in  the  early  spring  with  a  few  implements  and  a  small  sup- 
ply of  food  and  seed,  would  build  in  a  few  days  a  cabin  of  rough 
logs  with  an  earthen  floor  and  a  roof  of  bark  or  of  riven  clap- 
boards. To  clear  a  field  they  would  girdle  the  larger  trees  and 
clear  away  the  underbrush.  Corn  planted  in  April  would  fur- 
nish roasting  ears  in  three  months  and  ripe  grain  in  six  weeks 
more.  Game  was  plenty;  lightwood  was  a  substitute  for  can- 
dles ;  and  housewifely  skill  furnished  homespun  garments.  Shel- 
ter, food  and  clothing  and  possibly  a  small  cotton  crop  or  other 
surplus  were  thus  had  the  first  year.  Some  rested  with  this; 
but  the  more  thrifty  would  soon  replace  their  cabins  with  hewn 
log  or  frame  houses,  plant  kitchen  gardens  and  watermelon 
patches,  set  out  orchards  and  increase  the  cotton  acreage.  The 
further  earnings  of  a  year  or  two  would  supply  window  glass, 
table  ware,  coflfee,  tea  and  sugar,  a  stock  of  poultry,  a  few  hogs 
and  even  perhaps  a  slave  or  two.  The  pioneer  hardships  de- 
creased and  the  homely  comforts  grew  with  every  passing  year  of 
thrift.  But  the  orchard  yield  of  stuff  for  the  still,  and  the  cotton 
field's  furnishing  the  wherewithal  to  buy  more  slaves,  brought 
temptations.  Distilleries  and  slaves,  a  contemporary  said,  were 
blessings  or  curses  according  as  they  were  used  or  abused ;  for 
drunkenness  and  idleness  were  the  gates  of  the  road  to  retro- 
gression.''' 

The  pathetic  hardships  which  some  of  the  poorer  migrants  un- 
derwent in  their  labors  to  reach  the  western  opportunity  are  ex- 
emplified in  a  local  item  from  an  Augusta  newspaper  in  1819: 
"Passed  through  this  place  from  Greenville  District  [South  Caro- 
lina] bound  for  Chatahouchie,  a  man  and  his  wife,  his  son  and 
his  wife,  with  a  cart  but  no  horse.  The  man  had  a  belt  over  his 
shoulders  and  he  drew  in  the  shafts;  the  son  worked  by  traces 

^  David  Ramsay  History  of  South  Carolina,  II,  pp.  246  ff. 


174  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tied  to  the  end  of  the  shafts  and  assisted  his  father  to  draw  the 
cart;  the  son's  wife  rode  in  the  cart,  and  the  old  woman  was 
walking,  carrying  a  rifle,  and  driving  a  cow."  '  This  example, 
while  extreme,  was  not  unique.' 

The  call  of  the  west  was  carried  in  promoters'  publications,^"  in 
private  letters,  in  newspaper  reports,  and  by  word  of  mouth. 
A  typical  communication  was  sent  home  in  1817  by  a  Marylander 
who  had  moved  to  Louisiana:  'Tn  your  states  a  planter  with 
ten  negroes  with  difficulty  supports  a  family  genteelly ;  here  well 
managed  they  would  be  a  fortune  to  him.  With  you  the  seasons 
are  so  irregular  your  crops  often  fail;  here  the  crops  are  certain, 
and  want  of  the  necessaries  of  life  never  for  a  moment  causes  the 
heart  to  ache — abundance  spreads  the  table  of  the  poor  man,  and 
contentment  smiles  on  every  countenance."  "  Other  accounts 
told  glowingly  of  quick  fortunes  made  and  to  be  made  by  get- 
ting lands  cheaply  in  the  early  stages  of  settlement  and  selling 
them  at  greatly  enhanced  prices  when  the  tide  of  migration  ar- 
rived in  force.^^  Such  ebullient  expressions  were  taken  at  face 
value  by  thousands  of  the  unwary;  and  other  thousands  of  the 
more  cautious  followed  in  the  trek  when  personal  inquiries  had 
reinforced  the  tug  of  the  west.  The  larger  planters  generally 
removed  only  after  somewhat  thorough  investigation  and  after 
procuring  more  or  less  acquiescence  from  their  slaves ;  the 
smaller  planters  and  farmers,  with  lighter  stake  in  their  homes 
and  better  opportunity  to  sell  them,  with  lighter  impedimenta  for 
the  journey,  with  less  to  lose  by  misadventure,  and  with  poorer 
facilities  for  inquiry,  responded  more  readily  to  the  enticements. 

The  fever  of  migration  produced  in  some  of  the  people  an  un- 
conquerable restlessness.  An  extraordinary  illustration  of  this 
is  given  in  the  career  of  Gideon  Lincecum  as  written  by  himself. 
In  1802,  when  Gideon  was  ten  years  old,  his  father,  after  farm- 
ing successfully  for  some  years  in  the  Georgia  uplands  was  lured 
by  letters  from  relatives  in  Tennessee  to  sell  out  and  remove 

*  Augusta,  Ga.,  Chronicle,  Sept.  24,  1819,  reprinted  in  Plantation  and 
Frontier,  II,  196. 

"Niles'  Register,  XX,  320. 

"£.  g.,  the  Washington,  Ky.,  Mirror,  Sept.  30,  1797. 

"^ Niles'  Register,  XIII,  38. 

"E.  g.,  Federal  Union   (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  March  11,  1836. 


THE  WES^TWARD  MOVEMENT  ^^^ 

thither.  Taking  the  roundi^y  ^  junction  with  othcarolinas  to 
avoid  the  Cherokee  country,  J°^^^"^^^\i4^'^*^'5'a  wagon  and  four 
horses  to  carry  a  bed,  four  c^i^^s,  four  white  and  four  negro 
children,  and  his  mother  who  was  eight)'-eight  years  old.  When 
but  a  few  days  on  the  road  an  illness  of  the  old  woman  caused  a 
halt,  whereupon  Lincecum  rented  a  nearby  farm  and  spent  a  year 
on  a  cotton  crop.  The  journey  was  then  resumed,  but  barely 
had  the  Savannah  River  been  crossed  when  another  farm  was 
rented  and  another  crop  begun.  Next  year  they  returned  to 
Georgia  and  worked  a  farm  near  Athens,  Then  they  set  out 
again  for  Tennessee ;  but  on  the  road  in  South  Carolina  the  wreck 
of  the  wagon  and  its  ancient  occupant  gave  abundant  excuse  for 
the  purchase  of  a  farm  there.  After  another  crop,  successful  as 
usual,  the  family  moved  back  to  Georgia  and  cropped  still  an- 
other farm.  Young  Gideon  now  attended  school  until  his  father 
moved  again,  this  time  southward,  for  a  crop  near  Eatonton. 
Gideon  then  left  his  father  after  a  quarrel  and  spent  several 
years  as  a  clerk  in  stores  here  and  there,  as  a  county  tax  collector 
and  as  a  farmer,  and  began  to  read  medicine  in  odd  moments. 
He  now  married,  about  the  beginning  of  the  year  1815,  and  re- 
joined his  father  who  was  about  to  cross  the  Indian  country  to 
settle  in  Alabama.  But  they  had  barely  begun  this  journey  when 
the  father,  while  tipsy,  bought  a  farm  on  the  Georgia  frontier, 
where  the  two  families  settled  and  Gideon  interspersed  deer 
hunting  with  his  medical  reading.  Next  spring  the  cavalcade 
crossed  the  five  hundred  miles  of  wilderness  in  six  weeks,  and 
reached  the  log  cabin  village  of  Tuscaloosa,  where  Gideon  built 
a  house.  But  provisions  were  excessively  dear,  and  his  hospital- 
ity to  other  land  seekers  from  Georgia  soon  consumed  his  sav- 
ings. He  began  whipsawing  lumber,  but  after  disablement  from 
a  gunpowder  explosion  he  found  lighter  employment  in  keeping 
a  billiard  room.  He  then  set  out  westward  again,  breaking  a 
road  for  his  wagon  as  he  went.  Upon  reaching  the  Tombigbee 
River  he  built  a  clapboard  house  in  five  days,  cleared  land  from 
its  canebrake,  planted  corn  with  a  sharpened  stick,  and  in  spite 
of  ravages  from  bears  and  raccoons  gathered  a  hundred  and  fifty 
bushels  from  six  acres.     When  the  town  of  Columbus,  Missis- 


1^6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  §LAVERY 

sippi,  was  xT^^  ^^  ^"^  shafts  and  assijg  sawed  boards  to  build  a 
house  on  specula,  •^.i'^^^^^"  ^"^  ^%  was  diverted  to  the  Indian 
trade,  bartering  whiskey,  ciuti.H."fyi  miscellaneous  goods  for  pel- 
tries. He  then  became  a  justice  of  the  peace  and  school  com- 
missioner at  Columbus,  surveyed  and  sold  town  lots  on  public 
account,  and  built  two  school  houses  with  the  proceeds.  He  then 
moved  up  the  river  to  engage  anew  in  the  Indian  trade  with  a 
partner  who  soon  proved  a  drunkard.  He  and  his  wife  there 
took  a  fever  which  after  baffling  the  physicians  was  cured  by  his 
own  prescription.  He  then  moved  to  Cotton  Gin  Port  to  take 
charge  of  a  store,  but  was  invalided  for  three  years  by  a  sun- 
stroke. Gradually  recovering,  he  lived  in  the  woods  on  light  diet 
until  the  thought  occurred  to  him  of  carrying  a  company  of  Choc- 
taw ball  players  on  a  tour  of  the  United  States.  The  tour  was 
made,  but  the  receipts  barely  covered  expenses.  Then  in  1830, 
Lincecum  set  himself  up  as  a  physician  at  Columbus.  No  sooner 
had  he  built  up  a  practice,  however,  than  he  became  dissatisfied 
with  allopathy  and  went  to  study  herb  remedies  among  the  In- 
dians; and  thereafter  he  practiced  botanic  medicine.  In  1834 
he  went  as  surgeon  with  an  exploring  party  to  Texas  and  found 
that  country  so  attractive  that  after  some  years  further  at  Co- 
lumbus he  spent  the  rest  of  his  long  life  m  Texas  as  a  planter, 
physician  and  student  of  natural  history.  He  died  there  in  1873 
at  the  age  of  eighty  years.^^ 

The  descriptions  and  advice  which  prospectors  m  the  west  sent 
home  are  exemplified  in  a  letter  of  F.  X.  Martm,  written  in  New 
Orleans  in  191 1,  to  a  friend  in  eastern  North  Carolina.  The 
lands,  he  said,  were  the  most  remunerative  in  the  whole  coun- 
try; a  planter  near  Natchez  was  earning  $270  per  hand  each 
year.  The  Opelousas  and  Attakapas  districts  for  sugar,  and  the 
Red  River  bottoms  for  cotton,  he  thought,  offered  the  best  op- 
portunities because  of  the  cheapness  of  their  lands.  As  to  the 
journey  from  North  Carolina,  he  advised  that  the  start  be  made 
about  the  first  of  September  and  the  course  be  laid  through  Knox- 
ville  to  Nashville.    Traveling  thence  through  the  Indian  country, 

"F.  L.  Riley,  ed.,  "The  Autobiography  of  Gideon  Lincecum,"  in  the 
Mississippi  Historical  Society  Publications,  VIII,  443-519. 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  177 

safety  would  be  assured  by  a  junction  with  other  migrants. 
Speed  would  be  greater  on  horseback,  but  the  route  was  feasible 
for  vehicles,  and  a  traveler  would  find  a  tent  and  a  keg  of  water 
conducive  to  his  comfort.  The  Indians,  who  were  generally  short 
of  provisions  in  spring  and  summer,  would  have  supplies  to 
spare  in  autumn ;  and  the  prevailing  dryness  of  that  season  would 
make  the  streams  and  swamps  in  the  path  less  formidable.  An 
alternative  route  lay  through  Georgia ;  but  its  saving  of  distance 
was  offset  by  the  greater  expanse  of  Indian  territory  to  be 
crossed,  the  roughness  of  the  road  and  the  frequency  of  rivers. 
The  viewing  of  the  delta  country,  he  thought,  would  require  three 
or  four  months  of  inspection  before  a  choice  of  location  could 
safely  be  made.^* 

The  procedure  of  planters  embarking  upon  long  distance  mi- 
gration may  be  gathered  from  the  letters  which  General  Leonard 
Covington  of  Calvert  County,  Maryland,  wrote  to  his  brother 
and  friends  who  had  preceded  him  to  the  Natchez  district.  In 
August,  1808,  finding  a  prospect  of  selling  his  Maryland  lands, 
he  formed  a  project  of  carrying  his  sixty  slaves  to  Mississippi 
and  hiring  out  some  of  them  there  until  a  new  plantation  should 
be  ready  for  routine  operation.  He  further  contemplated  tak- 
ing with  him  ten  or  fifteen  families  of  non-slaveholding  whites 
who  were  eager  to  migrate  under  his  guidance  and  wished  em- 
ployment by  him  for  a  season  while  they  cast  about  for  farms  of 
their  own.  Covington  accordingly  sent  inquiries  as  to  the  pre- 
vailing rates  of  hire  and  the  customary  feeding  and  treatment 
of  slaves.  He  asked  whether  they  were  commonly  worked  only 
from  ''sun  to  sun,"  and  explained  his  thought  by  saying,  "It  is 
possible  that  so  much  labor  may  be  required  of  hirelings  and  so 
little  regard  may  be  had  for  their  constitutions  as  to  render  them 
in  a  few  years  not  only  unprofitable  but  expensive."  He  asked 
further  whether  the  slaves  there  were  contented,  whether  they 
as  universally  took  wives  and  husbands  and  as  easily  reared 
children  as  in  Maryland,  whether  cotton  was  of  more  certain 
yield  and  sale  than  tobacco,  what  was  the  cost  of  clearing  land 

**  Plantation  and  Frontier,  ll,  197-200. 


178  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  erecting  rough  buildings,  what  the  abundance  and  quality  of 
fruit,  and  what  the  nature  of  the  cHmate. 

The  repHes  he  received  were  quite  satisfactory,  but  a  failure 
to  sell  part  of  his  Maryland  lands  caused  him  to  leave  twenty- 
six  of  his  slaves  in  the  east.  The  rest  he  sent  forward  with  a 
neighbor's  gang.  Three  white  men  were  in  charge,  but  one  of 
the  negroes  escaped  at  Pittsburg  and  was  apparently  not  recap- 
tured. Covington  after  detention  by  the  delicacy  of  his  wife's 
health  and  by  duties  in  the  military  service  of  the  United  States, 
set  out  at  the  beginning  of  October,  1809,  with  his  wife  and  five 
children,  a  neighbor  named  Waters  and  his  family,  several  other 
white  persons,  and  eleven  slaves.  He  described  his  outfit  as  "the 
damnedest  cavalcade  that  ever  man  was  burdened  with ;  not  less 
than  seven  horses  compose  my  troop;  they  convey  a  close  car- 
riage (Jersey  stage),  a  gig  and  horse  cart,  so  that  my  family  are 
transported  with  comfort  and  convenience,  though  at  consider- 
able expense.  All  these  odd  matters  and  contrivances  I  design 
to  take  with  me  to  Mississippi  if  possible.  Mr.  Waters  will  also 
take  down  his  waggon  and  team."  Upon  learning  that  the  Ohio 
was  in  low  water  he  contemplated  journeying  by  land  as  far  as 
Louisville;  but  he  embarked  at  Wheehng  instead,  and  after 
tedious  dragging  "through  shoals,  sandbars  and  ripples"  he 
reached  Cincinnati  late  in  November.  When  the  last  letter  on 
the  journey  was  written  he  was  on  the  point  of  embarking  afresh 
on  a  boat  so  crowded,  that  in  spite  of  his  desire  to  carry  a  large 
stock  of  provisions  he  could  find  room  for  but  a  few  hundred- 
weight of  pork  and  a  few  barrels  of  flour.  He  apparently 
reached  his  destination  at  the  end  of  the  year  and  established  a 
plantation  with  part  of  his  negroes,  leaving  the  rest  on  hire.  The 
approach  of  the  war  of  1812  brought  distress;  cotton  was  low, 
bacon  was  high,  and  the  sale  of  a  slave  or  two  was  required  in 
making  ends  meet.  Covington  himself  was  now  ordered  by  the 
Department  of  War  to  take  the  field  in  command  of  dragoons, 
and  in  1813  was  killed  in  a  battle  beyond  the  Canadian  border. 
The  fate  of  his  family  and  plantation  does  not  appear  in  the  rec- 
ords.^' 

"Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  201-208. 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  179 

A  more  successful  migration  was  that  of  Col.  Thomas  S. 
Dabney  in  1835.  After  spending  the  years  of  his  early  manhood 
on  his  ancestral  tide-water  estate,  Elmington,  in  Gloucester 
County,  Virginia,  he  was  prompted  to  remove  by  the  prospective 
needs  of  his  rapidly  growing  family.  The  justice  of  his  antici- 
pations appears  from  the  fact  that  his  second  wife  bore  him  even- 
tually sixteen  children,  ten  of  whom  survived  her.  After  a  land- 
looking  tour  through  Alabama  and  Louisiana,  Dabney  chose  a 
tract  in  Hinds  County,  Mississippi,  some  forty  miles  east  of 
Vicksburg,  where  he  bought  the  property  of  several  farmers  as 
the  beginning  of  a  plantation  which  finally  engrossed  some  four 
thousand  acres.  Returning  to  Virginia,  he  was  given  a  great 
farewell  dinner  at  Richmond,  at  which  Governor  Tyler  presided 
and  many  speakers  congratulated  Mississippi  upon  her  gain  of 
such  a  citizen  at  Virginia's  expense.^^  Several  relatives  and 
neighbors  resolved  to  accompany  him  in  the  migration.  His 
brother-in-law,  Charles  Hill,  took  charge  of  the  carriages  and  the 
white  families,  while  Dabney  himself  had  the  care  of  the  wagons 
and  the  many  scores  of  negroes.  The  journey  was  accomplished 
without  mishap  in  two  months  of  perfect  autumn  weather.  Upon 
arriving  at  the  new  location  most  of  the  log  houses  were  found 
in  ruins  from  a  recent  hurricane;  but  new  shelters  were  quickly 
provided,  and  in  a  few  months  the  great  plantation,  with  its  force 
of  two  hundred  slaves,  was  in  routine  operation.  In  the  follow- 
ing years  Dabney  made  it  a  practice  to  clear  about  a  hundred 
acres  of  new  ground  annually.  The  land,  rich  and  rolling,  was 
so  varied  in  its  qualities  and  requirements  that  a  general  fail- 
ure of  crops  was  never  experienced — the  bottoms  would  thrive 
in  dry  seasons,  the  hill  crops  in  wet,  and  moderation  in  rainfall 
would  prosper  them  all.  The  small  farmers  who  continued  to 
dwell  nearby  included  Dabney  at  first  in  their  rustic  social  func- 
tions ;  but  when  he  carried  twenty  of  his  slaves  to  a  house-raising 
and  kept  his  own  hands  gloved  while  directing  their  work,  the 
beneficiary  and  his  fellows  were  less  grateful  for  the  service  than 
offended  at  the  undemocratic  manner  of  its  rendering.     When 

^' Richmond  Enquirer,  Sept.  22,  1835,  reprinted  in  Susan  D.  Smedes,  Me- 
morials of  a  Southern  Planter  (2d.  ed.,  Baltimore,  1888),  pp.  43-47. 


i8o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Dabney,  furthermore,  made  no  return  calls  for  assistance,  the 
restraint  was  increased.  The  rich  might  patronize  the  poor  in 
the  stratified  society  of  old  Virginia;  in  young  Mississippi  such 
patronage  was  an  unpleasant  suggestion  that  stratification  was 
beginning.^^  With  the  passage  of  years  and  the  continued  in- 
flux of  planters  ready  to  buy  their  lands  at  good  prices,  such 
farmers  as  did  not  thrive  tended  to  vacate  the  richer  soils.  The 
Natchez- Vicksburg  district  became  largely  consolidated  into 
great  plantations,^^  and  the  tract  extending  thence  to  Tuscaloosa, 
as  likewise  the  district  about  Mongtomery,  Alabama,  became  oc- 
cupied mostly  by  smaller  plantations  on  a  scale  of  a  dozen  or  two 
slaves  each,^^  while  the  non-slaveholders  drifted  to  the  southward 
pine-barrens  or  the  western  or  northwestern  frontiers. 

The  caravans  of  migrating  planters  were  occasionally  described 
by  travelers  in  the  period.  Basil  Hall  wrote  of  one  which  he 
overtook  in  South  Carolina  in  1828:  "It  .  .  .  did  not  consist  of 
above  thirty  persons  in  all,  of  whom  five-and-twenty  at  least  were 
slaves.  The  women  and  children  were  stowed  away  in  wagons, 
moving  slqwly  up  a  steep,  sandy  hill;  but  the  curtains  being 
let  down  we  could  see  nothing  of  them  except  an  occasional  glance 
of  an  eye,  or  a  row  of  teeth  as  white  as  snow.  In  the  rear  of  all 
came  a  light  covered  vehicle,  with  the  master  and  mistress  of  the 
party.  Along  the  roadside,  scattered  at  intervals,  we  observed  the 
male  slaves  trudging  in  front.  At  the  top  of  all,  against  the  sky 
line,  two  men  walked  together,  apparently  hand  in  hand  pacing 
along  very  sociably.  There  was  something,  however,  in  their  at- 
titude, which  seemed  unusual  and  constrained.  When  we  came 
nearer,  accordingly,  we  discovered  that  this  couple  were  bolted  to- 
gether by  a  short  chain  or  bar  riveted  to  broad  iron  clasps  secured 
in  like  manner  round  the  wrists.  'What  have  you  been  doing,  my 
boys,'  said  our  coachman  in  passing,  'to  entitle  you  to  these 
ruffles?'  *Oh,  sir,'  cried  one  of  them  quite  gaily,  'they  are  the  best 
things  in  the  world  to  travel  with.'    The  other  man  said  nothing, 

*'  Smedes,  Memorials  of  a  Southern  Planter,  pp.  42-68. 
^'F.  L.  Olmsted,  A  Journey  in  the  Back  Country  (New  York,  i860),  pp. 
20,  28. 

^ Ibid.,  pp.  160,  161;  Robert  Russell,  North  America  (Edinburgh,  1857), 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  i8l 

I  stopped  the  carriage  and  asked  one  of  the  slave  drivers  why 
these  men  v^ere  chained,  and  how  they  came  to  take  the  matter  so 
differently.  The  answer  explained  the  mystery.  One  of  them,  it 
appeared,  was  married,  but  his  wife  belonged  to  a  neighboring 
planter,  not  to  his  master.  When  the  general  move  was  made  the 
proprieter  of  the  female  not  choosing  to  part  with  her,  she  was 
necessarily  left  behind.  The  wretched  husband  was  therefore 
shackled  to  a  young  unmarried  man  who  having  no  such  tie  to 
draw  him  back  might  be  more  safely  trusted  on  the  journey."  ^° 

Timothy  Flint  wrote  after  observing  many  of  these  caravans : 
"The  slaves  generally  seem  fond  of  their  masters,  and  as  much 
delighted  and  interested  in  their  migration  as  their  masters.  It 
is  to  me  a  very  pleasing  and  patriarchal  sight."  ^^  But  Edwin  L. 
Godkin,  who  in  his  transit  of  a  Mississippi  swamp  in  1856  saw 
a  company  in  distress,  used  the  episode  as  a  peg  on  which  to  hang 
an  anti-slavery  sentiment :  'T  fell  in  with  an  emigrant  party  on 
their  way  to  Texas.  Their  mules  had  sunk  in  the  mud,  .  .  . 
the  wagons  were  already  embedded  as  far  as  the  axles.  The 
women  of  the  party,  lightly  clad  in  cotton,  had  walked  for  miles, 
knee-deep  in  water,  through  the  brake,  exposed  to  the  pitiless 
pelting  of  the  storm,  and  were  now  crouching  forlorn  and  woe- 
begone under  the  shelter  of  a  tree.  .  .  .  The  men  were  making 
feeble  attempts  to  light  a  fire.  .  .  .  'Colonel,'  said  one  of  them 
as  I  rode  past,  'this  is  the  gate  of  hell,  ain't  it?'  .  .  .  The  hard- 
ships the  negroes  go  through  who  are  attached  to  one  of  these 
emigrant  parties  baffle  description.  .  .  .  They  trudge  on  foot  all 
day  through  mud  and  thicket  without  rest  or  respite.  .  .  .  Thou- 
sands of  miles  are  traversed  by  these  weary  wayfarers  without 
their  knowing  or  caring  why,  urged  on  by  the  whip  and  in  the 
full  assurance  that  no  change  of  place  can  bring  any  change  to 
them.  .  .  .  Hard  work,  coarse  food,  merciless  floggings,  are  all 
that  await  them,  and  all  that  they  can  look  to.  I  have  never 
passed  them,  staggering  along  in  the  rear  of  the  wagons  at  the 

^  Basil  Hall,  Travels  in  North  America  (Edinburgh,  1829),  III,  128,  129. 
See  also  for  similar  scenes,  Adam  Hodgson,  Letters  from  North  America 
(London,  1854),  I,  113. 

'^Timothy  Flint,  History  and  Geography  of  the  Western  States  (Cincin- 
nati, 1828),  p.  II. 


i82  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

close  of  a  long  day's  march,  the  weakest  furthest  in  the  rear, 
the  strongest  already  utterly  spent,  without  wondering  how 
Christendom,  which  eight  centuries  ago  rose  in  arms  for  a  senti- 
ment, can  look  so  calmly  on  at  so  foul  and  monstrous  a  wrong  as 
this  American  slavery."  "  If  instead  of  crossing  the  Missis- 
sippi bottoms  and  ascribing  to  slavery  the  hardships  he  ob- 
served, Godkin  had  been  crossing  the  Nevada  desert  that  year 
and  had  come  upon,  as  many  others  did,  a  train  of  emigrants 
with  its  oxen  dead,  its  women  and  children  perishing  of  thirst, 
and  its  men  with  despairing  eyes  turned  still  toward  the  gold- 
fields  of  California,  would  he  have  inveighed  against  freedom  as 
the  cause?  Between  Flint's  impression  of  pleasure  and  Godkin's 
of  gloom  no  choice  need  be  made,  for  either  description  was 
often  exemplified.  In  general  the  slaves  took  the  fatigues  and 
the  diversions  of  the  route  merely  as  the  day's  work  and  the 
day's  play. 

Many  planters  whose  points  of  departure  and  of  destination 
were  accessible  to  deep  water  made  their  transit  by  sea.  Thus 
on  the  brig  Calypso  sailing  from  Norfolk  to  New  Orleans  in 
April,  1819,  Benjamin  Ballard  and  Samuel  T.  Barnes,  both  of 
Halifax  County,  North  Carolina,  carrying  30  and  196  slaves  re- 
spectively, wrote  on  the  margins  of  their  manifests,  the  one 
"The  owner  of  these  slaves  is  moving  to  the  parish  of  St.  Landry 
near  Opelousas  where  he  has  purchased  land  and  intends  settling, 
and  is  not  a  dealer  in  human  flesh,"  the  other,  "The  owner  of 
these  slaves  is  moving  to  Louisiana  to  settle,  and  is  not  a  dealer 
in  human  flesh."  On  the  same  voyage  Augustin  Pugh  of  the 
adjoining  Bertie  County  carried  seventy  slaves  whose  manifest, 
though  it  bears  no  such  asseveration,  gives  evidence  that  they 
likewise  were  not  a  trader's  lot;  for  some  of  the  negroes  were 
sixty  years  old,  and  there  were  as  many  children  as  adults  in  the 
parcel.  Lots  of  such  sizes  as  these  were  of  course  exceptional. 
In  the  packages  of  manifests  now  preserved  in  the  Library  of 
Congress  the  lists  of  from  one  to  a  dozen  slaves  outnumbered 
those  of  fifty  or  more  by  perhaps  a  hundred  fold. 

"Letter  of  E.  L.  Godkin  to  the  London  News,  reprinted  in  the  Nortk 
American  Review,  CLXXXV  (1907),  46,  47- 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  183 

The  western  cotton  belt  not  only  had  a  greater  expanse  and 
richer  lands  than  the  eastern,  but  its  cotton  tended  to  have  a 
longer  fiber,  ranging,  particularly  in  the  district  of  the  "bends" 
of  the  Mississippi  north  of  Vicksburg,  as  much  as  an  inch  and  a 
quarter  in  length  and  commanding  a  premium  in  the  market. 
Its  far  reaching  waterways,  furthermore,  made  freighting  easy 
and  permitted  the  planters  to  devote  themselves  the  more  fully 
to  their  staple.  The  people  in  the  main  made  their  own  food 
supplies;  yet  the  market  demand  of  the  western  cotton  belt  and 
the  sugar  bowl  for  grain  and  meat  contributed  much  toward 
the  calling  of  the  northwestern  settlements  into  prosperous 
existence.^^ 

This  thriving  of  the  West,  however,  was  largely  at  the  expense 

of  the  older  plantation  states.^*    In  1813  John  Randolph  wrote: 

"The  whole  country  watered  by  the  rivers  which  fall  into  the 

Chesapeake  is  in  a  state  of  paralysis.  .  .  .  The  distress  is  general 

and  heavy,  and  I  do  not  see  how  the  people  can  pay  their  taxes." 

And  again :    "In  a  few  years  more,  those  of  us  who  are  alive  will 

move  off  to  Kaintuck  or  the  Massissippi,  where  corn  can  be  had 

for  sixpence  a  bushel  and  pork  for  a  penny  a  pound.    I  do  not 

wonder  at  the  rage  for  emigration.     What  do  the  bulk  of  the 

people  get  here  that  they  cannot  have  there  for  one  fifth  the 

labor  in  the  western  country?"     Next  year,  after  a  visit  to  his 

birthplace,  he  exclaimed:     "What  a  spectacle  does  our  lower 

country  present!    Deserted  and  dismantled  country-houses  once 

the  seats  of  cheerfulness  and  plenty,  and  the  temples  of  the 

Most  High  ruinous  and  desolate,  'frowning  in  portentous  silence 

upon  the  land.'  "    And  in  1819  he  wrote  from  Richmond :    "You 

have  no  conception  of  the  gloom  and  distress  that  pervade  this 

place.    There  has  been  nothing  like  it  since  1785  when  from  the 

same  causes   (paper  money  and  a  general  peace)   there  was  a 

general  depression  of  everything."  ^^ 

The  extreme  depression  passed,  but  the  conditions  prompting 

emigration  were  persistent  and  widespread.     News  items  from 

"G.  S.  Callender  in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  XVII,  111-162. 
**  Edmund  Quincy,  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy  (Boston,  1869),  p.  336. 
"H.  A.  Garland,  Life  of  John  Randolph  (Philadelphia,  1851),  II,  15;  I, 
2;  II,  105. 


i84  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

here  and  there  continued  for  decades  to  tell  of  movement  in 
large  volume  from  Tide-water  and  Piedmont,  from  the  tobacco 
states  and  the  eastern  cotton-belt,  and  even  from  Alabama  in 
its  turn,  for  destinations  as  distant  and  divergent  as  Michigan, 
Missouri  and  Texas.  The  communities  which  suffered  cast 
about  for  both  solace  and  remedy.  An  editor  in  the  South  Caro- 
lina uplands  remarked  at  the  beginning  of  1833  that  if  emigra- 
tion should  continue  at  the  rate  of  the  past  year  the  state  would 
become  a  wilderness ;  but  he  noted  with  grim  satisfaction-  that 
it  was  chiefly  the  "fire-eaters"  that  were  moving  out.-^  In  1836 
another  South  Carolinian  wrote:  "The  spirit  of  emigration  is 
still  rife  in  our  community.  From  this  cause  we  have  lost  many, 
and  we  are  destined,  we  fear,  to  lose  more,  of  our  worthiest 
citizens."  Though  efforts  to  check  it  were  commonly  thought 
futile,  he  addressed  himself  to  suasion.  The  movement,  said 
he,  is  a  mistaken  one;  South  Carohna  planters  should  let  well 
enough  alone.  The  West  is  without  doubt  the  place  for  wealth, 
but  prosperity  is  a  trial  to  character.  In  the  West  money  is 
everything.  Its  pursuit,  accompanied  as  it  is  by  baneful  specula- 
tion, lawlessness,  gambling,  sabbath-breaking,  brawls  and  vio- 
lence, prevents  moral  attainment  and  mental  cultivation.  Sub- 
stantial people  should  stay  in  South  Carolina  to  preserve  their 
pristine  purity,  hospitality,  freedom  of  thought,  fearlessness  and 
nobility.^^ 

An  Alabama  spokesman  rejoiced  in  the  manual  industry  of  the 
white  people  in  his  state,  and  said  if  the  negroes  were  only 
thinned  off  it  would  become  a  great  and  prosperous  common- 
wealth.^^ But  another  Alabamian,  A.  B.  Meek,  found  reason  to 
eulogize  both  emigration  and  slavery.  He  said  the  roughness  of 
manners  prevalent  in  the  haphazard  western  aggregation  of  New 
Englanders,  Virginians,  Carolinians  and  Georgians  would  prove 
but  a  temporary  phase.  Slavery  would  be  of  benefit  through  its 
tendency  to  stratify  society,  ennoble  the  upper  classes,  and  give 
even  the  poorer  whites  a  stimulating  pride  of  race.    'Tn  a  few 

'"  Sumterville,  S.  C,  Whig,  Jan.  5,  1833. 

''  "The   Spirit   of   Emigration,"   signed   "A    South   Carolinian,"   in   the 
Southern  Literary  Journal,  II,  259-262  (June,  1836). 
^  Portland,  Ala.,  Evening  Advertiser,  April  12,  1833. 


THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  185 

years,"  said  he,  "owing  to  the  operation  of  this  institution  upon 
our  unparalleled  natural  advantages,  we  shall  be  the  richest  peo- 
ple beneath  the  bend  of  the  rainbow ;  and  then  the  arts  and  the 
sciences,  which  always  follow  in  the  train  of  wealth,  will  flour- 
ish to  an  extent  hitherto  unknown  on  this  side  of  the  At- 
lantic." 2» 

As  a  practical  measure  to  relieve  the  stress  of  the  older  dis- 
tricts a  beginning  was  made  in  seed  selection,  manuring  and  crop 
rotation  to  enhance  the  harvests ;  horses  were  largely  replaced  by 
mules,  whose  earlier  maturity,  greater  hardihood  and  longer  lives 
made  their  use  more  economical  for  plow  and  wagon  work ;  ^°  the 
straight  furrows  of  earlier  times  gave  place  in  the  Piedmont 
to  curving  ones  which  followed  the  hill  contours  and  when  sup- 
plemented with  occasional  grass  balks  and  ditches  checked  the 
scouring  of  the  rains  and  conserved  in  some  degree  the  thin 
soils  of  the  region ;  a  few  textile  factories  were  built  to  better  the 
local  market  for  cotton  and  lower  the  cost  of  cloth  as  well  as  to 
yield  profits  to  their  proprietors;  the  home  production  of  grain 
and  meat  supplies  was  in  some  measure  increased;  and  river 
and  highway  improvements  and  railroad  construction  were  un- 
dertaken to  lessen  the  expenses  of  distant  marketing.^^  Some 
of  these  recourses  were  promptly  adopted  in  the  newer  settle- 
ments also ;  and  others  proved  of  little  avail  for  the  time  being. 
The  net  effect  of  the  betterments,  however,  was  an  appreciable 
offsetting  of  the  western  advantage;  and  this,  when  added  to 
the  love  of  home,  the  disrelish  of  primitive  travel  and  pioneer 
life,  and  the  dread  of  the  costs  and  risks  involved  in  removal, 
dissuaded  multitudes  from  the  project  of  migration.  The  actual 
depopulation  of  the  Atlantic  states  was  less  than  the  plaints,  of 
the  time  would  suggest.  The  volume  of  emigration  was  un- 
doubtedly great,  and  few  newcomers  came  in  to  fill  the  gaps. 
But  the  birth  rate  alone  in  those  generations  of  ample  families 
more  than  replaced  the  losses  year  by  year  in  most  localities. 

'^Southern  Ladies'  Book  (Macon,  Ga.),  April,  1840. 

'°H.  T.  Cook,  The  Life  and  Legacy  of  David  R.  Williams  (New  York, 
1916),  pp.  166-168. 

"  U.  B.  Phillips,  History  of  Transportation  in  the  Eastern  Cotton  Belt  to 
i860. 


i86  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

The  sense  of  loss  was  in  general  the  product  not  of  actual  deple- 
tion but  of  disappointment  in  the  expectation  of  increase. 

The  non-slaveholding  backwoodsmen  formed  the  vanguard  of 
settlement  on  each  frontier  in  turn;  the  small  slaveholders  fol- 
lowed on  their  heels  and  crowded  each  fertile  district  until  the 
men  who  lived  by  hunting  as  well  as  by  farming  had  to  push 
further  westward ;  finally  the  larger  planters  with  their  crowded 
carriages,  their  lumbering  wagons  and  their  trudging  slaves 
arrived  to  consolidate  the  fields  of  such  earlier  settlers  as  would 
sell.  It  often  seemed  to  the  wayfarer  that  all  the  world  was  on  the 
move.  But  in  the  districts  of  durable  soil  thousands  of  men,  cling- 
ing to  their  homes,  repelled  every  attack  of  the  western  fever. 


y 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE 

IN  the  New  England  town  of  Pl\-mouth  in  November,  1729, 
a  certain  Thompson  Phillips  who  was  about  to  sail  for 
Jamaica  exchanged  a  half  interest  in  his  one-legged  negro 
man  for  a  similar  share  in  Isaac  Lathrop's  negro  boy  who  was 
to  sail  with  Phillips  and  be  sold  on  the  voyage.  Lathrop  was 
meanwhile  to  teach  the  man  the  trade  of  cordwaining,  and  was 
to  resell  his  share  to  Phillips  at  the  end  of  a  year  at  a  price 
of  £40  sterling.^  This  transaction,  which  was  duly  concluded  in 
the  following  year,  suggests  the  existence  of  a  trade  in  slaves 
on  a  small  scale  from  north  to  south  in  colonial  times.  Another 
item  in  the  same  connection  is  an  advertisement  in  the  Boston 
Gasette  of  August  17,  1761,  offering  for  sale  young  slaves  just 
from  Africa  and  proposing  to  take  in  exchange  "any  negro  men, 
strong  and  heartj'  though  not  of  the  best  moral  character,  which 
are  proper  subjects  of  transportation" ;  *  and  a  third  instance 
appears  in  a  letter  of  James  Habersham  of  Georgia  in  1764  tell- 
ing of  his  purchase  of  a  parcel  of  negroes  at  New  York  for  work 
on  his  rice  plantation.^  That  the  disestablishment  of  slavery  in 
the  Nonh  during  and  after  the  American  Revolution  enhanced 
the  exportation  of  negroes  was  recited  in  a  \'ermont  statute  of 
1787,*  and  is  shown  by  occasional  items  in  Southern  archives. 
One  of  these  is  the  registry  at  Savannah  of  a  bill  of  sale  made  at 
New  London  in  1787  for  a  mulatto  boy  "as  a  ser^-ant  for  the 
term  of  ten  years  only,  at  the  expiration  of  which  time  he  is  to 
be  free."  ^     Another  is  a  report  from  an  official  at  Norfolk  to  the 

*  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  XXFV",  335,  336. 

*  Reprinted  in  Joshua  Coffin,  An  Account  of  Some  of  the  Principal  Slave 
Insurrections  (New  York,  i860),  p.  15. 

*  "The  Letters  of  James  Habersham,"  in  the  Georgia  Historical  Society 
Collections,  \'l,  22,  23. 

*NezL'  England  Register,  XXIX,  24S,  citing  Vermont  Statutes,  1787,  p. 
105.  ^ 

*L.  B.  Phillips,  "Racial  Problems,  Adjustments  and  Disturbances  in 
the  Ante-bellum  South,"  in  The  South  in  the  Building  of  the  Nation, 
IV,  21%. 

187 


i88  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Govet-nor  of  Virginia,  in  1795,  relating  that  the  captain  of  a  sloop 
from  Boston  with  three  negroes  on  board  pleaded  ignorance  of 
the  Virginia  law  against  the  bringing  in  of  slaves.^ 

The  federal  census  returns  show  that  from  1790  onward  the 
decline  in  the  number  of  slaves  in  the  Northern  states  was  more 
than  counterbalanced  by  the  increase  of  their  free  negroes. 
This  means  either  that  the  selling  of  slaves  to  the  southward 
was  very  slight,  or  that  the  statistical  effect  of  it  was  canceled 
by  the  northward  flight  of  fugitive  slaves  and  the  migration  of 
negroes  legally  free.  There  seems  to  be  no  evidence  that  the 
traffic  across  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  was  ever  of  large  dimen- 
sions, the  following  curious  item  from  a  New  Orleans  news- 
paper in  1818  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding:  "Jersey  negroes 
appear  to  be  peculiarly  adapted  to  this  market — especially  those 
that  bear  the  mark  of  Judge  Van  Winkle,  as  it  is  understood 
that  they  offer  the  best  opportunity  for  speculation.  We  have 
the  right  to  calculate  on  large  importations  in  future,  from  the 
success  which  hitherto  attended  the  sale."  ^ 

The  internal  trade  at  the  South  began  to  be  noticeable  about 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  A  man  at  Knoxville,  Tennes- 
see, in  December,  1795,  sent  notice  to  a  correspondent  in  Ken- 
tucky that  he  was  about  to  set  out  with  slaves  for  delivery  as 
agreed  upon,  and  would  carry  additional  ones  on  speculation ; 
and  he  concluded  by  saying  "I  intend  carrying  on  the  business 
extensively."®  In  1797  La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt  met  a 
"drove  of  negroes"  about  one  hundred  in  number,^  whose  owner 
had  abandoned  the  planting  business  in  the  South  Carolina  up- 
lands and  was  apparently  carrying  them  to  Charleston  for  sale. 
In  1799  there  was  discovered  in  the  Georgia  treasury  a  short- 
age of  some  ten  thousand  dollars  which  a  contemporary  news 
item  explained  as  follows :  Mr.  Sims,  a  member  of  the  legisla- 
ture, having  borrowed  the  money  from  the  treasurer,  entrusted  it 
to   a   certain   Speers    for   the   purchase   of   slaves   in   Virginia. 

'  Calendar  of  Virginia  State  Papers,  VIII,  255. 

^Augusta,  Ga.,  Chronicle,  Aug.  22,  1818,  quoting  the  New  Orleans 
Chronicle,  July   14,   1818. 

'Unsigned  MS.  draft  in  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Society,  Draper  collec- 
tion, printed  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  55,  56. 

*La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,  Travels  in  the  United  States,  p.  592. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  189 

"Speers  accordingly  went  and  purchased  a  considerable  nurnber 
of  negroes;  and  on  his  way  returning  to  this  state  the  negroes 
rose  and  cut  the  throats  of  Speers  and  another  man  who  ac- 
companied him.  The  slaves  fled,  and  about  ten  of  them,  I  think, 
were  killed.  In  consequence  of  this  misfortune  Mr.  Sims  was 
rendered  unable  to  raise  the  money  at  the  time  the  legislature 
met."  ^°  Another  transaction  achieved  record  because  of  a 
literary  effusion  which  it  prompted.  Charles  Mott  Lide  of 
South  Carolina,  having  inherited  a  fortune,  went  to  Virginia 
early  in  1802  to  buy  slaves,  and  began  to  establish  a  sea-island 
cotton  plantation  in  Georgia.  But  misfortune  in  other  invest- 
ments forced  him  next  year  to  sell  his  land,  slaves  and  crops 
to  tvv^o  immigrants  from  the  Bahama  Islands.  Thereupon,  wrote 
he,  'T  composed  the  following  valedictory,  which  breathes  some- 
thing of  the  tenderness  of  Ossian."  ^^  Callous  history  is  not  con- 
cerned in  the  farewell  to  his  "sweet  asylum,"  but  only  in  the 
fact  that  he  bought  slaves  in  Virginia  and  carried  them  to 
Georgia.  A  grand  jury  at  Alexandria  presented  as  a  grievance 
in  1802,  "the  practice  of  persons  coming  from  distant  parts  of  the 
United  States  into  this  district  for  the  purpose  of  purchasing 
slaves."  ^^  Such  fugitive  items  as  these  make  up  the  whole 
record  of  the  trade  in  its  early  years,  and  indeed  constitute  the 
main  body  of  data  upon  its  career  from  first  to  last. 

As  soon  as  the  African  trade  was  closed,  the  interstate  traffic 
began  to  assume  the  aspect  of  a  regular  business  though  for 
some  years  it  not  only  continued  to  be  of  small  scale  but  was 
oftentimes  merely  incidental  in  character.  That  is  to  say,  migrat- 
ing planters  and  farmers  would  in  some  cases  carry  extra  slaves 
bought  with  a  view  to  reselling  them  at  western  prices  and  apply- 
ing the  proceeds  toward  the  expense  of  their  new  homesteads. 
The  following  advertisement  by  William  Rochel  at  Natchez  in 
1810  gives  an  example  of  this :  "I  have  upwards  of  twenty 
likely  Virginia  bom  slaves  now  in  a  flat  bottomed  boat  lying  in 
the  river  at  Natchez,  for  sale  cheaper  than  has  been  sold  here 

"Charleston,  S.  C,  City  Gazette,  Dec.  21,  1799. 

"Alexander  Gregg,  History  of  the  Old  Cherazvs  (New  York,  1877),  pp. 
480-482. 

"  Quoted  in  a  speech  in  Congress  in  1829,  Register  of  Debates,  V,  177. 


I90  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

in  years.^^  Part  of  said  negroes  I  wish  to  barter  for  a  small  farm. 
My  boat  may  be  known  by  a  large  cane  standing  on  deck. 

The  heyday  of  the  trade  fell  in  the  piping  times  of  peace  and 
migration  from  1815  to  i860.  Its  greatest  activity  was  just 
prior  to  the  panic  of  1837,  for  thereafter  the  flow  was  held  some- 
what in  check,  first  by  the  hard  times  in  the  cotton  belt  and  then 
by  an  agricultural  renaissance  in  Virginia.  A  Richmond  news- 
paper reported  in  the  fall  of  1836  that  estimates  by  intelligent 
men  placed  Virginia's  export  in  the  preceding  year  at  120,000 
slaves,  of  whom  at  least  two  thirds  had  been  carried  by  emi- 
grating owners,  and  the  rest  by  dealers.^*  This  was  probably 
an  exaggeration  for  even  the  greatest  year  of  the  exodus.  What 
the  common  volume  of  the  commercial  transport  was  can  hardly 
be  ascertained  from  the  available  data. 

The  slave  trade  was  partly  systematic,  partly  casual.  For 
local  sales  every  public  auctioneer  handled  slaves  along  with 
other  property,  and  in  each  city  there  were  brokers  buying  them 
to  sell  again  or  handling  them  on  commission.  One  of  these  at 
New  Orleans  in  1854  was  Thomas  Foster  who  advertised  that 
he  would  pay  the  highest  prices  for  sound  negroes  as  well  as  sell 
those  whom  merchants  or  private  citizens  might  consign  him.  Ex- 
pecting to  receive  negroes  throughout  the  season,  he  said,  he 
would  have  a  constant  stock  of  mechanics,  domestics  and  field 
hands ;  and  in  addition  he  would  house  as  many  as  three  hundred 
slaves  at  a  time,  for  such  as  were  importing  them  from  other 
states.^^  Similarly  Clark  and  Grubb,  of  Whitehall  Street  in 
Atlanta,  when  advertising  their  business  as  wholesale  grocers, 
commission  merchants  and  negro  brokers,  announced  that  they 
kept  slaves  of  all  classes  constantly  on  hand  and  were  paying  the 
highest  market  prices  for  all  that  might  be  offered.^^  At  Nash- 
ville, William  L.  Boyd,  Jr.,  and  R.  W.  Porter  advertised  as  rival 
slave  dealers  in  1854;  ^^  and  in  the  directory  of  that  city  for  i860 
E.  S.  Hawkins,  G.  H.  Hitchings,  and  Webb,  Merrill  and  Company 
were  also  listed  in  this  traffic.     At  St.  Louis  in  1859  Corbin 

"  Natchez,  Miss.,  Weekly  Chronicle,  April  2,  1810. 

^*  Niles'  Register,  LI,  83  (Oct.  8,  1836),  quoting  the  Virginia  Times. 

^'Southern  Business  Directory  (Charleston,  1854),  I,  163. 

"Atlanta  Intelligencer,  Mch.  7,  i860. 

"Southern  Business  Directory,  II,  131. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  191 

Thompson  and  Bernard  M.  Lynch  were  the  principal  slave 
dealers.  The  rates  of  the  latter,  according  to  his  placard,  were 
37J^  cents  per  day  for  board  and  23^2  per  cent,  commission  on 
sales ;  and  all  slaves  entrusted  to  his  care  were  to  be  held  at  their 
owners'  risk.^^ 

On  the  other  hand  a  rural  owner  disposed  to  sell  a  slave 
locally  would  commonly  pass  the  word  round  among  his  neigh- 
bors or  publish  a  notice  in  the  county  newspaper.  To  this  would 
sometimes  be  appended  a  statement  that  the  slave  was  not  to  be 
sent  out  of  the  state,  or  that  no  dealers  need  apply.  The  fol- 
lowing is  one  of  many  such  Maryland  items :  "Will  be  sold  for 
cash  or  good  paper,  a  negro  woman,  22  years  old,  and  her  two 
female  children.!  She  is  sold  for  want  of  employment,  and  will  not 
be  sent  out  of  the  state.  Apply  to  the  editor."  ^^  In  some  cases, 
whether  rural  or  urban,  the  slave  was  sent  about  to  find  his  or 
her  purchaser. }  In  the  city  of  Washington  in  1854,  for  example, 
a  woman,  whose  husband  had  been  sold  South,  was  furnished 
with  the  following  document :  "The  bearer,  Mary  Jane,  and  her 
two  daughters,  are  for  sale.  They  are  sold  for  no  earthly  fault 
whatever.  She  is  one  of  the  most  ladylike  and  trustworthy 
servants  I  ever  knew.  She  is  a  first  rate  parlour  servant;  can 
arrange  and  set  out  a  dinner  or  party  supper  with  as  much  taste 
as  the  most  of  white  ladies.  She  is  a  pretty  good  mantua  maker; 
can  cut  out  and  make  vests  and  pantaloons  and  roundabouts  and 
joseys  for  little  boys  in  a  first  rate  manner.  Her  daughters'  ages 
are  eleven  and  thirteen  years,  brought  up  exclusively  as  house 
servants.  The  eldest  can  sew  neatly,  both  can  knit  stockings; 
and  all  are  accustomed  to  all  kinds  of  house  work.  ^  They  would 
not  be  sold  to  speculators  or  traders  for  any  price  whatever." 
The  price  for  the  three  was  fixed  at  $1800,  but  a  memorandum 
stated  that  a  purchaser  taking  the  daughters  at  $1000  might 
have  the  mother  on  a  month's  trial.  The  girls  were  duly  bought 
by  Dr.  Edward  Maynard,  who  we  may  hope  took  the  mother 
also  at  the  end  of  the  stipulated  month.^**|  In  the  cities  a  few 

"H.  A.  Trexler,  Slavery  in  Missouri,  1804-1865  (Baltimore,  1914),  p.  49. 
**  Charleston,  Md.,  Telegraph,  Nov.  7,  1828. 

"MSS.  in  the  New  York  Public  Library,  MSS.  division,  filed  under 
"slaverv." 


192  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

slaves  were  sold  by  lottery.  One  Boulmay,  for  example,  ad- 
vertised at  New  Orleans  in  1819  that  he  would  sell  fifty  tickets 
at  twenty  dollars  each,  the  lucky  drawer  to  receive  his  girl 
Amelia,  thirteen  years  old,^^ 

The  long  distance  trade,  though  open  to  any  who  would  engage 
in  it,  appears  to  have  been  conducted  mainly  by  firms  plying 
it  steadily.  Each  of  these  would  have  an  assembling  headquarters 
with  field  agents  collecting  slaves  for  it,  one  or  more  vessels 
perhaps  for  the  coastwise  traffic,  and  a  selling  agency  at  one  of 
the  centers  of  slave  demand.  The  methods  followed  by  some 
of  the  purchasing  agents,  and  the  local  esteem  in  which  they  were 
held,  may  be  gathered  by  an  item  written  in  1818  at  Winchester 
in  the  Shenandoah  Valley:  "Several  wretches,  whose  hearts 
must  be  as  black  as  the  skins  of  the  unfortunate  beings  who 
constitute  their  inhuman  traffic,  have  for  several  days  been  impu- 
dently prowling  about  the  streets  of  this  place  with  labels  on  their 
hats  exhibiting  in  conspicuous  characters  the  words  'Cash  for 
negroes.'  "r^  That  this  repugnance  was  genuine  enough  to  cause 
local  sellers  to  make  large  concessions  in  price  in  order  to  keep 
faithful  servants  out  of  the  hands  of  the  long-distance  traders 
is  evidenced  by  the  following  report  in  1824  from  Hillsborough 
on  the  eastern  shore  of  Maryland:  "Slaves  in  this  county,  and 
I  believe  generally  on  this  shore,  have  always  had  two  prices, 
viz.  a  neighbourhood  or  domestic  and  a  foreign  or  Southern 
price.  The  domestic  price  has  generally  been  about  a  third  less 
than  the  foreign,  and  sometimes  the  difference  amounts  to  one 

half."  ^% 

The  slaves  of  whom  their  masters  were  most  eager  to  be  rid 
were  the  indolent,  the  unruly,  and  those  under  suspicion.  A 
Creole  settler  at  Mobile  wrote  in  1748,  for  example,  to  a  friend 
living  on  the  Mississippi :  "I  am  sending  you  I'Eveille  and  his 
wife,  whom  I  beg  you  to  sell  for  me  at  the  best  price  to  be  had. 
If  however  they  will  not  bring  1,500  francs  each,  please  keep 
them  on  your  land  and  make  them  work.  What  makes  me  sell 
them  is  that  I'Eveille  is  accused  of  being  the  head  of  a  plot  of 

'^Louisiana  Courier   (New   Orleans),  Aug.   17,   i8iy. 
"  Virginia  Northwestern  Gazette,  Aug.  15,  1818. 
"American  Historical  Review,  XIX,  818. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  193 

some  thirty  Mobile  slaves  to  run  away.  He  stoutly  denies  this ; 
but  since  there  is  rarely  smoke  without  fire  I  think  it  well  to 
take  the  precaution."  ^*  The  converse  of  this  is  a  laconic  ad- 
vertisement at  Charleston  in  1800:  "Wanted  to  purchase  one 
or  two  negro  men  whose  characters  will  not  be  required."  ^^  It 
is  probable  that  offers  were  not  lacking  in  response. 

Some  of  the  slaves  dealt  in  were  actually  convicted  felons  sold 
by  the  states  in  which  their  crimes  had  been  committed.  The  pur- 
chasers of  these  were  generally  required  to  give  bond  to  trans- 
port them  beyond  the  limits  of  the  United  States;  but  some  of 
the  traders  broke  their  pledges  on  the  chance  that  their  breaches 
would  not  be  discovered.  One  of  these,  a  certain  W.  H.  Wil- 
liams, when  found  offering  his  outlawed  merchandize  of  twenty- 
four  convict  slaves  at  New  Orleans  in  1841,  was  prosecuted 
and  convicted.  His  penalty  included  the  forfeiture  of  the 
twenty-four  slaves,  a  fine  of  $500  to  the  state  of  Louisiana  for 
each  of  the  felons  introduced,  and  the  forfeiture  to  the  state 
of  Virginia  of  his  bond  in  the  amount  of  $1,000  per  slave.  The 
total  was  reckoned  at  $48,000.^^ 

The  slaves  whom  the  dealers  preferred  to  buy  for  distant  sale 
were  "likely  negroes  from  ten  to  thirty  years  old."  ^^  Faithful- 
ness and  skill  in  husbandry  were  of  minor  importance,  for  the 
trader  could  give  little  proof  of  them  to  his  patrons.  Demonstra- 
ble talents  in  artisanry  would  of  course  enhance  a  man's  value ; 
and  unusual  good  looks  on  the  part  of  a  young  woman  might 
stimulate  the  bidding  of  men  interested  in  concubinage.  Episodes 
of  the  latter  sort  were  occasionally  reported ;  but  in  at  least  one 
instance  inquiry  on  the  spot  showed  that  sex  was  not  involved. 
This  was  the  case  of  the  girl  Sarah,  who  was  sold  to  the  highest 
bidder  on  the  auction  block  in  the  rotunda  of  the  St.  Louis 
Hotel  at  New  Orleans  in  184 1  at  a  price  of  eight  thousand  dol- 
lars.    The   onlookers    were    set   agog,    but    a    newspaper   man 

**  MS.  in  private  possession,  here  translated  from  the  French. 
**  Charleston  City  Gazette,  Jan.  8,  1800. 

'^  N ties'  Register,  LX,  189,  quoting  the  New  Orleans  Picayune,  May  2, 
1841. 

"Advertisement  in  the  Western  Carolinian  (Salisbury,  N,  C),  July  12, 

1834. 


194  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

promptly  found  that  the  sale  had  been  made  as  a  mere  form  in 
the  course  of  litigation  and  that  the  bidding  bore  no  relation  to 
the  money  which  was  to  change  hands. ^*  Among  the  thousands 
of  bills  of  sale  which  the  present  writer  has  scanned,  in  every 
quarter  of  the  South,  many  have  borne  record  of  exceptional 
prices  for  men,  mostly  artisans  and  "drivers" ;  but  the  few 
women  who  brought  unusually  high  prices  were  described  in 
virtually  every  case  as  fine  seamstresses,  parlor  maids,  laun- 
dresses, hotel  cooks,  and  the  like.  Another  indication  against  the 
multiplicity  of  purchases  for  concubinage  is  that  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  women  listed  in  these  records  were  bought  in  family 
groups.  Concubinage  itself  was  fairly  frequent,  particularly 
in  southern  Louisiana ;  but  no  frequency  of  purchases  for  it  as  a 
predominant  purpose  can  be  demonstrated  from  authentic 
records. 

Some  of  the  dealers  used  public  jails,  taverns  and  warehouses 
for  the  assembling  of  their  slaves,  while  others  had  stockades  of 
their  own.  That  of  Franklin  and  Armfield  at  Alexandria,  man- 
aged by  the  junior  member  of  the  firm,  was  described  by  a  visitor 
in  July,  1835.  In  addition  to  a  brick  residence  and  office,  it  com- 
prised two  courts,  for  the  men  and  women  respectively,  each 
with  whitewashed  walls,  padlocked  gates,  cleanly  barracks  and 
eating  sheds,  and  a  hospital  which  at  this  time  had  no  occupants. 
In  the  men's  yards  "the  slaves,  fifty  or  sixty  in  number,  were 
standing  or  moving  about  in  groups,  some  amusing  themselves 
with  rude  sports,  and  others  engaged  in  conversation  which  was 
often  interrupted  by  loud  laughter  in  all  the  varied  tones  peculiar 
to  negroes."  They  were  mostly  young  men,  but  comprised  a 
few  boys  of  from  ten  to  fifteen  years  old.  In  the  women's  yard 
the  ages  ranged  similarly,  and  but  one  woman  had  a  young  child. 
The  slaves  were  neatly  dressed  in  clothes  from  a  tailor  shop 
within  the  walls,  and  additional  clothing  was  already  stored 
ready  to  be  sent  with  the  coffle  and  issued  to  its  members  at  the 
end  of  the  southward  journey.  In  a  yard  behind  the  stockade 
there  were  wagons  and  tents  made  ready  for  the  departure. 
Shipments  were  commonly  made  by  the  firm  once  every  two 

*•  New  Orleans  Bee,  Oct.  16,  1841. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  I95 

months  in  a  vessel  for  New  Orleans,  but  the  present  lot  was  to 
march  overland.  Whether  by  land  or  sea,  the  destination  was 
Natchez,  where  the  senior  partner  managed  the  selling  end  of 
the  business.  Armfield  himself  was  "a  man  of  fine  personal 
appearance,  and  of  engaging  and  graceful  manners" ;  and  his 
firm  was  said  to  have  gained  th^.  confidence  of  all  the  country- 
side by  its  honorable  dealings  and  by  its  resolute  efforts  to  dis- 
courage kidnapping.  It  was  said  to  be  highly  esteemed  even 
among  the  negroes.^^ 

Soon  afterward  this  traveler  made  a  short  voyage  on  the  Poto- 
mac with  a  trader  of  a  much  more  vulgar  type  who  was  carrying 
about  fifty  slaves,  mostly  women  with  their  children,  to  Freder- 
icksburg and  thence  across  the  Carolinas.  Overland,  the  trader 
said,  he  was  accustomed  to  cover  some  twenty-five  miles  a  day, 
with  the  able-bodied  slaves  on  foot  and  the  children  in  wagons. 
The  former  he  had  found  could  cover  these  marches,  after  the 
first  few  days,  without  much  fatigue.  His  firm,  he  continued, 
had  formerly  sent  most  of  its  slaves  by  sea,  but  one  of  the  vessels 
carrying  them  had  been  driven  to  Bermuda,  where  all  the  ne- 
groes had  escaped  to  land  and  obtained  their  freedom  under  the 
British  flag.^" 

The  scale  of  the  coasting  transit  of  slaves  may  be  ascertained 

from  the  ship  manifests  made  under  the  requirements  of  the 

congressional  act  of  1808  and  now  preserved  in  large  numbers 

in  the  manuscripts  division  of  the   Library  of   Congress.     Its 

volume  appears  to  have  ranged  commonly,  between   181 5  and 

i860,  at  from  two  to  five  thousand  slaves  a  year.    Several  score 

of  these,  or  perhaps  a  few  hundred,  annually  were  carried  as 

body  servants  by  their  owners  when  making  visits  whether  to 

southern  cities  or  to  New  York  or  Philadelphia.     Of  the  rest 

about  half  were  sent  or  carried  without  intent  of  sale.     Thus 

in    1 83 1    James    L.    Pettigru   and   Langdon    Cheves    sent    from 

Charleston  to  Savannah  85  and  64  slaves  respectively  of  ages 

ranging  from  ninety  and  seventy  years  to  infancy,  with  obvious 

purpose  to  develop  newly  acquired  plantations  in  Georgia.   Most 

*  E.  A.  Andrews,  Slavery  and  the  Domestic  Slave  Trade  in  the  United 
Staies  (Boston,  1836),  pp.  135,  143,  150. 
"'Ibid.,  pp.  145-149. 


196  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

of  the  non-commercial  shipments,  however,  were  in  lots  of  from 
one  to  a  dozen  slaves  each.  The  traders'  lots,  on  the  other  hand, 
which  were  commonly  of  considerable  dimensions,  may  be  some- 
what safely  distinguished  by  the  range  of  the  negroes'  ages, 
with  heavy  preponderance  of  those  between  ten  and  thirty  years, 
and  by  the  recurrence  of  shippers'  and  consignees'  names.  The 
Chesapeake  ports  were  the  chief  points  of  departure,  and  New 
Orleans  the  great  port  of  entry.  Thus  in  1819  Abner  Robinson 
at  Baltimore  shipped  a  cargo  of  99  slaves  to  William  Kenner  and 
Co.  at  New  Orleans,  whereas  by  1832  Robinson  had  himself 
removed  to  the  latter  place  and  was  receiving  shipments  from 
Henry  King  at  Norfolk.  In  the  latter  year  Franklin  and  Arm- 
field  sent  from  Alexandria  via  New  Orleans  to  Isaac  Franklin 
at  Natchez  three  cargoes  of  109,  117  and  134  slaves,  mainly  of 
course  within  the  traders'  ages ;  R.  C.  Ballard  and  Co,  sent 
batches  from  Norfolk  to  Franklin  at  Natchez  and  to  John  Hogan 
and  Co.  at  New  Orleans ;  and  William  T.  Foster,  associated  with 
William  Rollins  who  was  master  of  the  brig  Ajax,  consigned 
numerous  parcels  to  various  New  Orleans  correspondents. 
About  1850  the  chief  shippers  were  Joseph  Donovan  of  Balti- 
more, B.  M.  and  M.  L.  Campbell  of  the  same  place,  David 
Currie  of  Richmond  and  G.  W.  Apperson  of  Norfolk,  each  of 
whom  sent  each  year  several  shipments  of  several  score  slaves 
to  New  Orleans.  The  principal  recipients  there  were  Thomas 
Boudar,  John  Hogan,  W.  F.  Talbott,  Buchanan,  Carroll  and 
Co.,  Masi  and  Bourk,  and  Sherman  Johnson.  The  outward 
manifests  from  New  Orleans  show  in  turn  a  large  maritime  distri- 
bution from  that  port,  mainly  to  Galveston  and  Matagorda  Bay. 
The  chief  bulk  of  this  was  obviously  migrant,  not  commercial; 
but  a  considerable  dependence  of  all  the  smaller  Gulf  ports  and 
even  of  Montgomery  upon  the  New  Orleans  labor  market  is 
indicated  by  occasional  manifests  bulking  heavily  in  the  traders' 
ages.  In  1850  and  thereabouts,  it  is  curious  to  note,  there  were 
manifests  for  perhaps  a  hundred  slaves  a  year  bound  for  Chagres 
en  route  for  San  Francisco.  They  were  for  the  most  part  young 
men  carried  singly,  and  were  obviously  intended  to  share  their 
masters'  adventures  in  the  California  gold  fields. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  197 

Many  slaves  carried  by  sea  were  covered  by  marine  insurance. 
Among  a  number  of  policies  issued  by  the  Louisiana  Insurance 
Company  to  William  Kenner  and  Company  was  one  dated 
February  18,  1822,  on  slaves  in  transit  in  the  brig  Fame.  It 
was  made  out  on  a  printed  form  of  the  standard  type  for  the 
marine  insurance  of  goods,  with  the  words  "on  goods"  stricken 
out  and  "on  slaves"  inserted.  The  risks,  specified  as  assumed 
in  the  printed  form  were  those  "of  the  sea,  men  of  war,  fire, 
enemies,  pirates,  rovers,  thieves,  jettison,  letters  of  mart  and 
counter-mart,  surprisals,  taking  at  sea,  arrests,  restraints  and 
detainments  of  all  kings,  princes  or  people  of  what  nation,  con- 
dition or  quality  soever,  barratry  of  the  master  and  mariners,  and 
all  other  perils,  losses  and  misfortunes  that  have  or  shall  come 
to  the  hurt,  detriment  or  damage  of  the  said  goods  or  merchan- 
dize, or  any  part  thereof."  In  manuscript  was  added :  "This 
insurance  is  declared  to  be  made  on  one  hundred  slaves,  valued 
at  $40,000  and  warranted  by  the  insured  to  be  free  from  insur- 
rection, elopement,  suicide  and  natural  death."  The  premium 
was  one  and  a  quarter  per  cent,  of  the  forty  thousand  dol- 
lars.^^  That  the  insurers  were  not  always  free  from  serious 
risk  is  indicated  by  a  New  Orleans  news  item  in  1818  relating 
that  two  local  insurance  companies  had  recently  lost  more  than 
forty  thousand  dollars  in  consequence  of  the  robbery  of  seventy- 
two  slaves  out  of  a  vessel  from  the  Chesapeake  by  a  piratical 
boat  off  the  Berry  Islands.^^ 

Overland  coffles  were  occasionally  encountered  and  described 
by  travelers.  Featherstonhaugh  overtook  one  at  daybreak  one 
morning  in  southwestern  Virginia  bound  through  the  Tennessee 
Valley  and  wrote  of  it  as  follows :  "It  was  a  camp  of  negro 
slave  drivers,  just  packing  up  to  start.  They  had  about  three 
hundred  slaves  with  them,  who  had  bivouacked  the  preceding 
night  in  chains  in  the  woods.  These  they  were  conducting  to 
Natchez  on  the  Mississippi  River  to  work  upon  the  sugar  plan- 
tations in  Louisiana.  It  resembled  one  of  the  coffles  spoken  of 
by  Mungo  Park,  except  that  they  had  a  caravan  of  nine  wagons 

"  Original  in  private  possession. 

"  Augusta,  Ga.,  Chronicle,  Sept.  23,  1818,  quoting  the  Orleans  Gazette. 


198  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  single-horse  carriages  for  the  purpose  of  conducting  the 
white  people  and  any  of  the  blacks  that  should  fall  lame.  .  .  . 
The  female  slaves,  some  of  them  sitting  on  logs  of  wood,  while 
others  were  standing,  and  a  great  many  little  black  children, 
were  warming  themselves  at  the  fire  of  the  bivouac.  In  front 
of  them  all,  and  prepared  for  the  march,  stood  in  double  files 
about  two  hundred  men  slaves,  manacled  and  chained  to  each 
other."  The  writer  went  on  to  ejaculate  upon  the  horror  of 
"white  men  with  liberty  and  equality  in  their  mouths,"  driving 
black  men  "to  perish  in  the  sugar  mills  of  Louisiana,  where  the 
duration  of  life  for  a  sugar  mill  hand  does  not  exceed  seven 
years."  ^^  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who  was  less  disposed  to  moralize 
or  to  repeat  slanders  of  the  Louisiana  regime,  wrote  upon,  reach- 
ing the  outskirts  of  Columbus,  Georgia,  in  January,  1846:^  "The 
first  sight  we  saw  there  was  a  long  line  of  negroes,  men,  women 
and  boys,  well  dressed  and  very  merry,  talking  and  laughing, 
who  stopped  to  look  at  our  coach.  On  inquiry  we  were  told  that 
it  was  a  gang  of  slaves,  probably  from  Virginia,  going  to  the 
market  to  be  sold."  ^*  Whether  this  laughing  company  wore 
shackles  the  writer  failed  to  say.  ^ 

Some  of  the  slaves  in  the  coffles  were  peddled' to  planters  and 
townsmen  along  the  route;  the  rest  were  carried  to  the  main 
distributing  centers  and  there  either  kept  in  stock  for  sale  at 
fixed  prices  to  such  customers  as  might  apply,  or  sold  at  auction. 
Oftentimes  a  family  group  divided  for  sale  was  reunited  by  pur- 
chase. Johann  Schoepf  observed  a  prompt  consummation  of  the 
sort  when  a  cooper  being  auctioned  continually  called  to  the 
bidders  that  whoever  should  buy  him  must  buy  his  son  also,  an 
injunction  to  which  his  purchaser  duly  conformed.^^  Both  hard- 
ness of  heart  and  shortness  of  sight  would  have  been  involved 
in  the  neglect  of  so  ready  a  means  of  promoting  the  workman's 
equanimity ;  and  the  good  nature  of  the  competing  bidders  doubt- 
less made  the  second  purchase  easy.    More  commonly  the  sellers 

**  G.  W.  Featherstonhaugh,  Excursion  through  the  Slave  States  (Lon- 
don, 1844),  I,  120. 

•*Sir  Charles  Lyell,  A  Second  Visit  to  the  United  States  (New  York, 

1849),  n,  35. 

"Johann  David  Schoepf,  Travels  in  the  Confederation,  1783-J/84,  A.  J. 
Morrison  tr.  (Philadelphia,  1911),  I,  148. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  199 

offered  the  slaves  in  family  groups  outright.  By  whatever 
method  the  sales  were  made,  the  slaves  of  both  sexes  were  sub- 
jected to  such  examination  of  teeth  and  limbs  as  might  be  de- 
sired.^® Those  on  the  block  oftentimes  praised  their  own 
strength  and  talents,  for  it  was  a  matter  of  pride  to  fetch  high 
prices.  On  the  other  hand  if  a  slave  should  bear  a  grudge 
against  his  seller,  or  should  hope  to  be  bought  only  by  someone 
who  would  expect  but  light  service,  he  might  pretend  a  dis- 
ability though  he  had  it  not.  The  purchasers  were  commonly 
too  shrewd  to  be  deceived  in  either  way ;  yet  they  necessarily  took 
risks  in  every  purchase  they  made.  If  horse  trading  is  notori- 
ously fertile  in  deception,  slave  trading  gave  opportunity  for  it 
in  as  much  greater  degree  as  human  nature  is  more  complex  and 
uncertain  than  equine  and  harder  to  fathom  from  surface  indica- 
tions. 

There  was  also  some  risk  of  loss  from  defects  of  title.  The 
negroes  offered  might  prove  to  be  kidnapped  freemen,  or  stolen 
slaves,  or  to  have  been  illegally  sold  by  their  former  owners 
in  defraud  of  mortgagees.  The  last  of  these  considerations  was 
particularly  disquieting  in  times  of  financial  stress,  for  suspicion 
of  wholesale  frauds  then  became  rife.  At  the  beginning  of  1840, 
for  example,  the  offerings  of  slaves  from  Mississippi  in  large 
numbers  and  at  bargain  prices  in  the  New  Orleans  market 
prompted  a  local  editor  to  warn  the  citizens  against  buying  cheap 
slaves  who  might  shortly  be  seized  by  the  federal  marshal  at 
the  suit  of  citizens  in  other  states.  A  few  days  afterward  the 
same  journal  printed  in  its  local  news  the  following:  "Many 
slaves  were  put  up  this  day  at  the  St.  Louis  exchange.  Few  if 
any  were  sold.  It  is  very  difficult  now  to  find  persons  willing  to 
buy  slaves  from  Mississippi  or  Alabama  on  account  of  the  fears 
entertained  that  such  property  may  be  already  mortgaged  to  the 
banks  of  the  above  named  states.    Our  moneyed  men  and  specu- 

"The  proceedings  at  typical  slave  auctions  are  narrated  by  Basil  Hall, 
Travels  in  North  America  (Edinburgh,  1829),  III,  143-145;  and  by  William 
Chambers,  Things  as  they  are  in  America  (2d  edition,  London,  1857), 
pp.  273-284. 


.{oo  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

lators  are  now  wide  awake.    It  will  take  a  pretty  cunning  child 
to  cheat  them."  " 

The  disesteem  in  which  the  slavetraders  were  held  was  so 
great  and  general  in  the  Southern  community  as  to  produce  a 
social  ostracism.  The  prevailing  sentiment  was  expressed,  with 
perhaps  a  little  exaggeration,  by  D.  R.  Hundley  of  Alabama  in 
his  analysis  of  Southern  social  types:  "Preeminent  in  villainy 
and  a  greedy  love  of  filthy  lucre  stands  the  hard-hearted  negro 
trader,  .  .  .  Some  of  them,  we  do  not  doubt,  are  conscientious 
men,  but  the  number  is  few.  Although  honest  and  honorable 
when  they  first  go  into  the  business,  the  natural  result  of  their 
calling  seems  to  corrupt  them;  for  they  usually  have  to  deal 
with  the  most  refractory  and  brutal  of  the  slave  population, 
since  good  and  honest  slaves  are  rarely  permitted  to  fall  into  the 
unscrupulous  clutches  of  the  speculator.  .  .  .  [He]  is  outwardly 
a  coarse,  ill-bred  person,  provincial  in  speech  and  manners,  with 
a  cross-looking  phiz,  a  whiskey-tinctured  nose,  cold  hard-looking 
eyes,  a  dirty  tobacco-stained  mouth,  and  shabby  dress.  .  .  .  He 
is  not  troubled  evidently  with  a  conscience,  for  although  he 
habitually  separates  parent  from  child,  brother  from  sister,  and 
husband  from  wife,  he  is  yet  one  of  the  jolliest  dogs  alive,  and 
never  evinces  the  least  sign  of  remorse.  .  .  .  Almost  every 
sentence  he  utters  is  accompanied  by  an  oath.  .  .  .  Nearly  nine 
tenths  of  the  slaves  he  buys  and  sells  are  vicious  ones  sold  for 
crimes  and  misdemeanors,  or  otherwise  diseased  ones  sold  be- 
cause of  their  worthlessness  as  property.  These  he  purchases  for 
about  one  half  what  healthy  and  honest  slaves  would  cost  him; 
but  he  sells  them  as  both  honest  and  healthy,  mark  you!  So 
soon  as  he  has  completed  his  'gang'  he  dresses  them  up  in  good 
clothes,  makes  them  comb  their  kinky  heads  into  some  appear- 
ance of  neatness,  rubs  oil  on  their  dusky  faces  to  give  them  a 
sleek  healthy  color,  gives  them  a  dram  occasionally  to  make  them 
sprightly,  and  teaches  each  one  the  part  he  or  she  has  to  play; 
and  then  he  sets  out  for  the  extreme  South.  ...  At  every  village 
of  importance  he  sojourns  for  a  day  or  two,  each  day  ranging  his 
'gang'  in  a  line  on  the  most  busy  street,  and  whenever  a  customer 

•*  Louisiana  Courier,  Feb.  12  and  15,  1840. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  20I 

makes  his  appearance  the  oily  speculator  button-holes  him  im- 
mediately and  begins  to  descant  in  the  most  highfalutin  fashion 
upon  the  virtuous  lot  of  darkeys  he  has  for  sale.  Mrs.  Stowe's 
Uncle  Tom  was  not  a  circumstance  to  any  one  of  the  dozens  he 
points  out.  So  honest!  so  truthful!  so  dear  to  the  hearts  of  their 
'  former  masters  and  mistresses !  Ah !  Messrs.  stock-brokers  of 
Wall  Street — you  who  are  wont  to  cry  up  your  rotten  railroad, 
mining,  steamboat  and  other  worthless  stocks  ^^ — for  ingenious 
lying  you  should  take  lessons  from  the  Southern  negro  trader !" 
Some  of  the  itinerant  traders  were  said,  however,  and  probably 
with  truth,  to  have  had  silent  partners  among  the  most  sub- 
stantial capitalists  in  the  Southern  cities.^^ 

The  social  stigma  upon  slave  dealing  doubtless  enhanced  the 
profits  of  the  traders  by  diminishing  the  competition.  The  dif- 
ference in  the  scales  of  prices  prevailing  at  any  time  in  the  cheap- 
est and  the  dearest  local  markets  was  hardly  ever  less  than 
thirty  per  cent.  From  such  a  margin,  however,  there  had  to  be 
deducted  not  only  the  cost  of  feeding,  clothing,  sheltering,  guard- 
ing and  transporting  the  slaves  for  the  several  months  commonly 
elapsing  between  purchase  and  sale  in  the  trade,  but  also  allow- 
ances for  such  loss  as  might  occur  in  transit  by  death,  illness, 
accident  or  escape.  At  some  periods,  furthermore,  slave  prices 
fell  so  rapidly  that  the  prospect  of  profit  for  the  speculator 
vanished.  At  Columbus,  Georgia,  in  December,  1844,  for  ex- 
ample, it  was  reported  that  a  coffle  from  North  Carolina  had  been 
marched  back  for  want  of  buyers.*"  But  losses  of  this  sort  were 
more  than  offset  in  the  long  run  by  the  upward  trend  of  prices 
which  was  in  effect  throughout  the  most  of  the  ante-bellum 
period.  The  Southern  planters  sometimes  cut  into  the  business 
of  the  traders  by  going  to  the  border  states  to  buy  and  bring  home 
in  person  the  slaves  they  needed.*^  The  building  of  railways 
speeded  the  journeys  and  correspondingly  reduced  the  costs.  The 
Central  of  Georgia  Railroad  improved  its  service  in  1858  by  insti- 

*'  D.  R.  Hundley,  Social  Relations  in  our  Southern  States  (New  York, 
i860),  pp.  139-142. 
''Ibid.,  p.  145. 

*" Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  Dec.  31,  1844. 
*^  Andrews,  Slavery  and  the  Domestic  Slave  Trade,  p.  171. 


202  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tuting  a  negro  sleeping  car  ^^ — an  accommodation  which  appar- 
ently no  railroad  has  furnished  in  the  post-bellum  decades. 

While  the  traders  were  held  in  common  contempt,  the  incidents 
and  effects  of  their  traffic  were  viewed  with  mixed  emotions.  Its 
employment  of  shackles  was  excused  only  on  the  ground  of 
necessary  precaution.^  Its  breaking  up  of  families  was  generally 
deplored,  although  it  was  apologized  for  by  thick-and-thin  cham- 
pions of  everything  Southern  with  arguments  that  negro  domestic 
ties  were  weak  at  best  and  that  the  separations  were  no  more 
frequent  than  those  suffered  by  free  laborers  at  the  North  under 
the  stress  of  economic  necessity.?  Its  drain  of  money  from  the 
districts  importing  the  slaves  was  regretted  as  a  financial  dis- 
advantage. On  the  other  hand,  the  citizens  of  the  exporting 
states  were  disposed  to  rejoice  doubly  at  being  saved  from  loss 
by  the  depreciation  of  property  on  their  hands  ^'  and  at  seeing 
the  negro  element  in  their  population  begin  to  dwindle ;  ^*  but 
even  these  considerations  were  in  some  degree  offset,  in  Vir- 
ginia at  least,  by  thoughts  that  the  shrinkage  of  the  blacks  was 
not  enough  to  lessen  materially  the  problem  of  racial  adjustments, 
that  it  was  prime  young  workmen  and  women  rather  than  culls 
who  were  being  sold  South,  that  white  immigration  was  not 
filling  their  gaps,  and  that  accordingly  land  prices  were  falling 
as  slave  prices  rose.*'' 

Delaware  alone  among  the  states  below  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line  appears  to  have  made  serious  effort  to  restrict  the  outgoing 
trade  in  slaves ;  but  all  the  states  from  Maryland  and  Kentucky 
to  Louisiana  legislated  from  time  to  time  for  the  prohibition 
of  the  inward  trade.*^  The  enforcement  of  these  laws  was  called 
for  by  citizen  after  citizen  in  the  public  press,  as  demanded  by 
"every  principle  of  justice,  humanity,  policy  and  interest,"  and 
particularly  on  the  ground  that  if  the  border  states  were  drained 

"  Central  of  Georgia  Railroad  Company  Report  for  1859. 

*' National  Intelligencer  (Washington,  D.  C),  Jan.  19,  1833. 

**R.  R.  Howison,  History  of  Virginia  (Richmond,  Va.,  1846-1848),  IL 
519,  520. 

**  Edmund  Ruffin,  "The  Effects  of  High  Prices  of  Slaves,"  in  DeBow's 
Review,  XXVI,  647-657  (June,  1859). 

*' These  acts  are  summarized  in  W.  H.  Collins,  Domestic  Slave  Trade, 
chap.  7. 


THE  DOMESTIC  SLAVE  TRADE  203 

of  slaves  they  would  be  transferred  from  the  pro-slavery  to  the 
anti-slavery  group  in  politics.*^  The  state  laws  could  not  con- 
stitutionally debar  traders  from  the  right  of  transit,  and  as  a  rule 
they  did  not  prohibit  citizens  from  bringing  in  slaves  for  their 
own  use.  These  two  apertures,  together  with  the  passiveness  of 
the  public,  made  the  legislative  obstacles  of  no  effect  whatever. 
As  to  the  neighborhood  trade  within  each  community,  no  prohi- 
bition was  attempted  anywhere  in  the  South. 

On  the  whole,  instead  of  hampering  migration,  as  serfdom 
would  have  done,  the  institution  of  slavery  made  the  negro  popu- 
lation much  more  responsive  to  new  industrial  opportunity  than 
if  it  had  been  free.  The  long  distance  slave  trade  found  its 
principal  function  in  augmenting  the  westward  movement.  No 
persuasion  of  the  ignorant  and  inert  was  required ;  the  fiat  of 
one  master  set  them  on  the  road,  and  the  fiat  of  another  set 
them  to  new  tasTcs.  The  local  branch  of  the  trade  had  its  main 
use  in  transferring  labor  from  impoverished  employers  to  those 
with  better  means,  from  passive  owners  to  active,  and  from 
persons  with  whom  relations  might  be  strained  to  others  whom 
the  negroes  might  find  more  congenial.  That  this  last  was  not 
negligible  is  suggested  by  a  series  of  letters  in  i860  from  Wil- 
liam Capers,  overseer  on  a  Savannah  River  rice  plantation,  to 
Charles  Manigault  his  employer,  concerning  a  slave  foreman  or 
"driver"  named  John,  In  the  first  of  these  letters,  August  5, 
Capers  expressed  pleasure  at  learning  that  John,  who  had  in 
previous  years  been  his  lieutenant  on  another  estate,  was  for 
sale.  He  wrote :  "Buy  him  by  all  means.  There  is  but  few 
negroes  more  competent  than  he  is,  and  he  was  not  a  drunkard 
when  under  my  management.  .  =  ,  In  speaking  with  John  he 
does  not  answer  like  a  smart  negro,  but  he  is  quite  so.  You  had 
better  say  to  him  who  is  to  manage  him  on  Savannah."  A  week 
later  Capers  wrote :  "John  arrived  safe  and  handed  me  yours 
of  the  9th  inst.    I  congratulate  you  on  the  purchase  of  said  negro. 

*'' Louisiana  Gazette,  Feb.  25,  1818  and  Jan.  29,  1823;  Louisiana  Courier, 
Jan.  13,  1831;  Georgia  Journal  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  Dec.  4,  1821,  reprinted 
in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  67-70;  Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.), 
Feb.  6,  1847. 


204  AMErIcAN  negro  SLAVERY 

He  says  he  is  quite  satisfied  to  be  here  and  will  do  as  he  has 
always  done  'during  the  time  I  have  managed  him.'  No  drink 
will  be  offered  him.  All  on  my  part  will  be  done  to  bring  John 
all  right."  Finally,  on  October  15,  Capers  reported:  "I  have 
found  John  as  good  a  driver  as  when  I  left  him  on  Santee.  Bad 
management  was  the  cause  of  his  being  sold,  and  [I]  am  glad  you 
have  been  the  fortunate  man  to  get  him."*^ 

Leaving  aside  for  the  present,  as  topics  falling  more  fitly 
under  the  economics  of  slavery,  the  questions  of  the  market 
breeding  of  slaves  in  the  border  states  and  the  working  of  them 
to  death  in  the  lower  South,  as  well  as  the  subject  of  in- 
flations and  depressions  in  slave  prices,  it  remains  to  mention 
the  chief  defect  of  the  slave  trade  as  an  agency  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  labor.  This  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  dealt  only  in  life- 
time service.  Employers,  it  is  true,  might  buy  slaves  for  tem- 
porary employment  and  sell  them  when  the  need  for  their  labor 
was  ended;  but  the  fluctuations  of  slave  prices  and  of  the  local 
opportunity  to  sell  those  on  hand  would  involve  such  persons 
in  slave  trading  risks  on  a  scale  eclipsing  that  of  their  industrial 
earnings.  The  fact  that  slave  hiring  prevailed  extensively  in  all 
the  Southern  towns  demonstrates  the  eagerness,  of  short  term 
employers  to  avoid  the  toils  of  speculation. 

*'  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  337^338. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  COTTON  REGIME 

IT  would  be  hard  to  overestimate  the  predominance  of  the 
special  crops  in  the  industry  and  interest  of  the  Southern 
community.  For  good  or  ill  they  have  shaped  its  develop- 
ment from  the  seventeenth  to  the  twentieth  century.  Each 
characteristic  area  had  its  own  staple,  and  those  districts  which 
had  none  were  scorned  by  all  typical  Southern  men.  The  several 
areas  expanded  and  contracted  in  response  to  fluctuations  in  the 
relative  prices  of  their  products.  Thus  when  cotton  was  excep- 
tionally high  in  the  early  'twenties  many  Virginians  discarded 
tobacco  in  its  favor  for  a  few  years,^  and  on  the  Louisiana  lands 
from  Baton  Rouge  to  Alexandria,  the  planters  from  time  to 
time  changed  from  sugar  to  cotton  and  back  again.^  There  were 
local  variations  also  in  scale  and  intensity ;  but  in  general  the 
system  in  each  area  tended  to  be  steady  and  fairly  uniform.  The 
methods  in  the  several  staples,  furthermore,  while  necessarily 
differing  in  their  details,  were  so  similar  in  their  emphasis  upon 
routine  that  each  reinforced  the  influence  of  the  others  in  shap- 
ing the  industrial  organization  of  the  South  as  a  whole. 

At  the  height  of  the  plantation  system's  career,  from  1815  to 
i860,  indigo  production  was  a  thing  of  the  past;  hemp  was  of  I 
negligible  importance;  tobacco  was  losing  in  the  east  what  it  » 
gained  in  the  west;  rice  and  sea-island  cotton  were  stationary; 
but  sugar  was  growing  in  local  intensity,  and  upland  cotton  was 
"king"  of  a  rapidly  expanding  realm.  The  culture  of  sugar, 
tobacco  and  rice  has  been  described  in  preceding  chapters;  that 
of  the  fleecy  staple  requires  our  present  attention. 

The  outstanding  features  of  the  landscape  on  a  short-staple 

^Richmond  Compiler,  Nov.  25,  1825,  and  Alexandria  Gazette,  Feb.  11, 
1826,  quoted  in  the  Clvarleston  City  Gazette,  Dec.  i,  1825  and  Feb.  20,  1826; 
The  American  Farmer  (Baltimore,  Dec.  29,  1825),  VII,  299. 

'  Hunt's  Merchant's  Magazine,  IX,  149. 

305 


2o6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

cotton  plantation  were  the  gin  house  and  its  attendant  baling 
press.  The  former  was  commonly  a  weatherboarded  structure 
some  forty  feet  square,  raised  about  eight  feet  from  the  ground 
by  wooden  pillars.  In  the  middle  of  t\e  space  on  the  ground 
level,  a  great  upright  hub  bore  an  iron-cogged  pinion  and  was 
pierced  by  a  long  horizontal  beam  some  three  feet  from  the 
ground.  Draught  animals  hitched  to  the  ends  of  this  and  driven 
in  a  circular  path  would  revolve  the  hub  and  furnish  power  for 
transmission  by  cogs  and  belts  to  the  gin  on  the  floor  above. 
At  the  front  of  the  house  were  a  stair  and  a  platform  for  unload- 
ing seed  cotton  from  the  wagons ;  inside  there  were  bins  for  stor- 
age, as  well  as  a  space  for  operating  the  gin;  and  in  the  rear 
a  lean-to  room  extending  to  the  ground  level  received  the  flying 
lint  and  let  it  settle  on  the  floor.  The  press,  a  skeleton  structure 
nearby,  had  in  the  center  a  stout  wooden  box  whose  interior 
length  and  width  determined  the  height  and  thickness  of  the 
bales  but  whose  depth  was  more  than  twice  as  great  as  the 
intended  bale's  width.  The  floor,  the  ends  and  the  upper  halves 
of  the  sides  of  the  box  were  built  rigidly,  but  the  lower  sides 
were  hinged  at  the  bottom,  and  the  lid  was  a  block  sliding  up 
and  down  according  as  a  great  screw  from  above  was  turned  to 
left  or  right.  The  screw,  sometimes  of  cast  iron  but  preferably 
of  wood  as  being  less  liable  to  break  under  strain  without  warn- 
ing, worked  through  a  block  mortised  into  a  timber  frame  above 
the  box,  and  at  its  upper  end  it  supported  two  gaunt  beams  which 
sloped  downward  and  outward  to  a  horse  path  encircling  the 
whole.  A  cupola  roof  was  generally  built  on  the  revolving  apex 
to  give  a  slight  shelter  to  the  apparatus ;  and  in  some  cases  a 
second  roof,  with  the  screw  penetrating  its  peak,  was  built  near 
enough  the  ground  to  escape  the  whirl  of  the  arms.  When  the 
contents  of  the  lint  room  were  sufficient  for  a  bale,  a  strip  of 
bagging  was  laid  upon  the  floor  of  the  press  and  another  was 
attached  to  the  face  of  the  raised  lid;  the  sides  of  the  press 
were  then  made  fast,  and  the  box  was  filled  with  cotton.  The 
draught  animals  at  the  beam  ends  were  then  driven  round  the 
path  until  the  descent  of  the  lid  packed  the  lint  firmly;  where- 
upon the  sides  were  lowered,  the  edges  of  the  bagging  drawn  into 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  207 

place,  ropes  were  passed  through  transverse  slots  in  the  lid  and 
floor  and  tied  round  the  bale  in  its  bagging,  the  pressure  was 
released,  and  the  bale  was  ready  for  market.  ^  Between  1820  and 
i860  improvements  in  the  apparatus  promoted  an  increase  in 
the  average  weight  of  the  bales  from  250  to  400  pounds ;  while 
in  still  more  recent  times  the  replacement  of  horse  power  by 
steam  and  the  substitution  of  iron  ties  for  rope  have  caused  the 
average  bale  to  be  yet  another  hundredweight  heavier.  *-  The 
only  other  distinctive  equipment  for  cotton  harvesting  comprised 
cloth  bags  with  shoulder  straps,  and  baskets  of  three  or  four 
bushels  capacity  woven  of  white-oak  splits  to  contain  the  con- 
tents of  the  pickers'  bags  until  carried  to  the  gin  house  to  be 
weighed  at  the  day's  end. 

Whether  on  a  one-horse  farm  ny  a  hundred-hand  plantation, 
the  essentials  in  cotton  growing  were  the  same.  \  In  an  average 
year  a  given  force  of  laborers  could  plant  and  cultivate  about 
twice  as  much  cotton  as  it  could  pick.  The  acreage  to  be  seeded 
in  the  staple  was  accordingly  fixed  by  a  calculation  of  the  har- 
vesting capacity,  and  enough  more  land  was  put  into  other  crops 
to  fill  out  the  spare  time  of  the  hands  in  spring  and  summ^r.^ 
To  this  effect  it  was  customary  to  plant  in  corn,  which  required 
less  than  half  as  much  work,  an  acreage  at  least  equal  to  that  in 
cotton,  and  to  devote  the  remaining  energy  to  sweet  potatoes, 
peanuts,  cow  peas  and  small  grain.  In  1820  the  usual  crop  in 
middle  Georgia  for  each  full  hand  was  reported  at  six  acres  of 
cotton  and  eight  of  corn;^  but  in  the  following  decades  during 
which  mules  were  advantageously  substituted  for  horses  and 
oxen,  and  the  implements  of  tillage  were  improved  and  the  har- 
vesters grew  more  expert,  the  annual  stint  was  increased  to  ten 
acres  in  cotton  and  ten  in  corn. 

At  the  Christmas  holiday  when  the  old  year's  harvest  was 
nearly  or  quite  completed,  well  managed  plantations  had  their  pre- 
liminaries for  the  new  crop  already  in  progress.  The  winter 
months  were  devoted  to  burning  canebrakes,  clearing  under- 
brush and  rolling  logs  in  the  new  grounds,  splitting  rails  and 

^The  American  Farmer  (Baltimore),  II,  359. 


,ioS  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

mending  fences,  cleaning  ditches,  spreading  manure,  knocking 
vlown  the  old  cotton  and  corn  stalks,  and  breaking  the  soil  of  the 
fields  to  be  planted.  Some  planters  broke  the  fields  completely 
each  year  and  then  laid  ofif  new  rows.  Others  merely  "listed" 
the  fields  by  first  running  a  furrow  with  a  shovel  plow  where 
each  cotton  or  corn  row  was  to  be  and  filling  it  with  a  single  fur- 
row of  a  turn  plow  from  either  side ;  then  when  planting  time 
approached  they  would  break  out  the  remaining  balks  with 
plows,  turning  the  soil  to  the  lists  and  broadening  them-  into 
rounded  plant  beds.  This  latter  plan  was  advocated  as  giving  a 
firm  seed  bed  while  making  the  field  clean  of  all  grass  at  the 
planting.  The  spacing  of  the  cotton  rows  varied  from  three  to 
five  feet  according  to  the  richness  of  the  soil.  The  policy  was  to 
put  them  at  such  distance  that  the  plants  when  full  grown  would 
lightly  interlace  their  branches  across  the  iniddles. 

In  March  the  corn  fields  were  commonly  planted,  not  so  much 
because  this  forehandedness  was  better  for  the  crop  as  for  the 
sake  of  freeing  the  choicer  month  of  April  for  the  more  impor- 
tant planting  of  cotton.  In  this  operation  a  narrow  plow 
lightly  opened  the  crests  of  the  beds;  cotton  seed  were  drilled 
somewhat  thickly  therein;  and  a  shallow  covering  of  earth  was 
given  by  means  of  a  concave  board  on  a  plow  stock,  or  by  a 
harrow,  a  roller  or  a  small  shallow  plow. 

Within  two  or  three  weeks,  as  soon  as  the  young  plants  had  -put 
forth  three  or  four  leaves,  thinning  and  cultivation  was  begun. 
Hoe  hands,  under  orders  to  chop  carefully,  stirred  the  crust  along 
the  rows  and  reduced  the  seedlings  to  a  "double  stand,"  leaving 
only  two  plants  to  grow  at  each  interval  of  twelve  or  eighteen 
inches.  The  plows  then  followed,  stirring  the  soil  somewhat 
deeply  near  the  rows.  In  another  fortnight  the  hoes  gave  an- 
other chopping,  cutting  down  the  weaker  of  each  pair  of  plants, 
thus  reducing  the  crop  to  a  "single  stand" ;  and  where  plants 
were  missing  they  planted  fresh  seed  to  fill  the  gaps.  The 
plows  followed  again,  with  broad  wings  to  their  shares,  to  break 
the  crust  and  kill  the  grass  throughout  the  middles.  Similar  al- 
ternations of  chipping  and  plowing  then  ensued  until  near  the 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  209 

end  of  July,  each  cultivation  shallower  than  the  last  in  order  that 
the  roots  of  the  cotton  should  not  be  cut.* 

When  the  blossoms  were  giving  place  to  bolls  in  midsummer, 
"lay-by  time"  was  at  hand.  Cultivation  was  ended,  and  the  la- 
bor was  diverted  to  other  tasks  until  in  late  August  or  early  Sep- 
tember the  harvest  began.  The  corn,  which  had  been  worked 
at  spare  times  previously,  now  had  its  blades  stripped  and  bun- 
dled for  fodder ;  the  roads  were  mended,  the  gin  house  and  press 
put  in  order,  the  premises  in  general  cleaned  up,  and  perhaps  a 
few  spare  days  given  to  recreation. 

The  cotton  bolls  ripened  and  opened  in  series,  those  near  the 
center  of  the  plant  first,  then  the  outer  ones  on  the  lower  branches, 
and  finally  the  top  crop.  If  subjected  unduly  to  wind  and  rain 
the  cotton,  drooping  in  the  bolls,  would  be  blown  to  the  ground  or 
tangled  with  dead  leaves  or  stained  with  mildew.  It  was  expedi- 
ent accordingly  to  send  the  pickers  through  the  fields  as  early 
and  as  often  as  there  was  crop  enough  open  to  reward  the  labor. 

Four  or  five  compartments  held  the  contents  of  each  boll ;  from 
sixty  to  eighty  bolls  were  required  to  yield  a  pound  in  the  seed ; 
and  three  or  four  pounds  of  seed  cotton  furnished  one  pound  of 
lint.  When  a  boll  was  wide  open  a  deft  picker  could  empty  all 
of  its  compartments  by  one  snatch  of  the  fingers ;  and  a  specially 
skilled  one  could  keep  both  hands  flying  independently,  and  still 
exercise  the  small  degree  of  care  necessary  to  keep  the  lint  fairly 
free  from  the  trash  of  the  brittle  dead  calyxes.  As  to  the  day's 
work,  a  Georgia  planter  wrote  in  1830:  "A  hand  will  pick  or 
gather  sixty  to  a  hundred  pounds  of  cotton  in  the  seed,  with  ease, 
per  day.  I  have  heard  of  some  hands  gathering  a  hundred  and 
twenty  pounds  in  a  day.  The  hands  on  a  plantation  ought  to 
average  sixty-five  pounds."  '  But  actual  records  in  the  follow- 
ing decades  made  these  early  pickers  appear  very  inept.  On 
Levin  Covington's  plantation  near  Natchez  in  1844,  in  a  typical 

*  Cotton  Culture  is  described  by  M.  W.  Philips  in  the  American  Agricul- 
turist, II  (New  York,  1843),  51,  81,  117,  149;  by  various  writers  in  J.  A. 
Turner,  ed.,  The  Cotton  Planter's  Manual  (New  York,  1856),  chap.  I; 
Harry  Hammond,  The  Cotton  Plant  (U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture, 
Experiment  Station,  Bulletin  33,  1896)  ;  and  in  the  U.  S.  Census,  1880,  vols. 
V  and  VI. 

*  American  Farmer,  II,  359. 


2IO  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

week  of  October,  Bill  averaged  220  pounds  a  day,  Dred  205 
pounds,  Aggy  215,  and  Delia  185;  and  on  Saturday  of  that  week 
all  the  twenty-eight  men  and  boys  together  picked  an  average  of 
160  pounds,  and  all  the  eighteen  women  and  girls  an  average  of 
125.*  But  these  were  dwarfed  in  turn  by  the  pickings  on  J.  W. 
Fowler's  Prairie  plantation,  Coahoma  County,  Mississippi,  at  the 
close  of  the  ante-bellum  period.  In  the  week  of  September  12 
to  17,  1859,  Sandy,  Carver  and  Gilmore  each  averaged  about 
three  hundred  pounds  a  day,  and  twelve  other  men  and  five  women 
ranged  above  two  hundred,  while  the  whole  gang  of  fifty-one  men 
and  women,  boys  and  girls  average  157  pounds  each  J 

'^he  picking  required  more  perseverance  than  strength.  Dex- 
terity was  at  a  premium,  but  the  labors  of  the  slow,  the  youthful 
and  the  aged  were  all  called  into  requisition,  f  When  the  fields 
were  white  with  their  fleece  and  each  day  might  bring  a  storm 
to  stop  the  harvesting,  every  boll  picked  might  well  be  a  boll 
saved  from  destruction./  Even  the  blacksmith  was  called  from 
his  forge  and  the  farmer's  children  from  school  to  bend  their 
backs  in  the  cotton  rows.  The  women  and  children  picked  stead- 
ily unless  rains  drove  them  in ;  the  men  picked  as  constantly  ex- 
cept when  the  crop  was  fairly  under  control  and  some  other 
task,  such  as  breaking  in  the  corn,  called  the  whole  gang  for  a 
day  to  another  field  or  when  the  gin  house  crew  had  to  clear  the 
bins  by  working  up  their  contents  to  make  room  for  more  seed 
cotton. 

In  the  Piedmont  where  the  yield  was  lighter  the  harvest  was 
generally  ended  by  December;  but  in  the  western  belt,  particu- 
larly when  rains  interrupted  the  work,  it  often  extended  far  into 
the  new  year.  Lucien  Minor,  for  example,  wrote  when  travel- 
ing through  the  plantations  of  northern  Alabama,  near  Hunts- 
ville,  in  December,  1823 :  "These  fields  are  still  white  with  cot- 
ton, which  frequently  remains  unpicked  until  March  or  April, 
when  the  ground  is  wanted  to  plant  the  next  crop." '     Planters 

*  MS.  in  the  Mississippi  Department  of  History  and  Archives,  Jackson, 
Miss. 

'MS.  in  the  possession  of  W.  H.  Stovall,  Stovall,  Miss. 
"Atlantic  Monthly,  XXVI,  175. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  211 

occasionally  noted  in  their  journals  that  for  want  of  pickers  the 
top  crop  was  lost. 

As  to  the  yicid,  an  adage  was  current,  that  cotton  would  prom- 
ise more  and, Jo  less  and  promise  less  and  do  more  than  any 
other  green  thing  that  grew.  The  plants  in  the  earlier  stages 
were  very  delicate.  Rough  stirring  of  the  clods  would  kill  them ; 
excess  of  rain  or  drought  would  be  likewise  fatal ;  and  a  choking 
growth  of  grass  would  altogether  devastate  the  field.  Improve- 
ment of  conditions  would  bring  quick  recuperation  to  the  surviv- 
ing stalks,  which  upon  attaining  their  full  growth  became  quite 
hardy;  but  undue  moisture  would  then  cause  a  shedding  of  the 
bolls,  and  the  first  frost  of  autumn  would  stop  the  further  fruit- 
ing. The  plants,  furthermore,  were  liable  to  many  diseases  and 
insect  ravages.  In  infancy  cut-worms  might  sever  the  stalks  at 
the  base,  and  lice  might  sap  the  vitality;  in  the  full  flush  of 
blooming  luxuriance,  wilt  and  rust,  the  latter  particularly  on  older 
lands,  might  blight  the  leaves,  or  caterpillars  in  huge  armies  re- 
duce them  to  skeletons  and  blast  the  prospect ;  and  even  when  the 
fruit  was  formed,  boll-worms  might  consume  the  substance 
within,  or  dry-rot  prevent  the  top  crop  from  ripening.  The 
ante-bellum  planters,  however,  were  exempt  from  the  Mexican 
boll- weevil,  the  great  pest  of  the  cotton  belt  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury.     \ 

While  every  planter  had  his  fat  years  and  lean,  and  the  yield 
of  the  belt  as  a  whole  alternated  between  bumper  crops  and  short 
ones,  the  industry  was  in  general  of  such  profit  as  to  maintain  a 
continued  expansion  of  its  area  and  a  never  ending  though  some- 
times hesitating  increase  of  its  product.  The  crop  rose  from 
eighty-five  million  pounds  in  1810  to  twice  as  much  in  1820;  it 
doubled  again  by  1830  and  more  than  doubled  once  more  by 
1840.  Extremely  low  prices  for  the  staple  in  the  early  'forties 
and  again  in  1849  prompted  a  campaign  for  crop  reduction;  and 
in  that  decade  the  increase  was  only  from  830,000,000  to  1,000,- 
000,000  pounds.  But  the  return  of  good  prices  in  the  'fifties 
caused  a  fresh  and  huge  enlargement  to  2,300,000,000  pounds  in 
the  final  census  year  of  the  ante-bellum  period.  While  this  was 
little  more  than  one  fourth  as  great  as  the  crops  of  sixteen  mil- 


212  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

lion  bales  in  1912  and  1915,  it  was  justly  reckoned  In  its  time,  at 
home  and  abroad,  a  prodigious  output.  All  the  rest  of  the  world 
then  produced  barely  one  third  as  much.  The  co  "ton  sent  abroad 
made  up  nearly  two  thirds  of  the  value  of  the  grot,s  export  trade 
of  the  United  States,  while  the  tobacco  export  had  hardly  a  tenth 
of  the  cotton's  worth.  Jn  competition  with  all  the  other  staples, 
cotton  engaged  the  services  of  some  three  fourths  of  all  the  coun- 
try's plantation  labor,  in  addition  to  the  labor  of  many  thousands 
of  white  farmers  and  their  families. 

The  production  and  sale  of  the  staple  engrossed  no  less  of  the 
people's  thought  than  of  their  work.  A  traveler  who  made  a  zig- 
zag journey  from  Charleston  to  St.  Louis  in  the  early  months  of 
1827,  found  cotton  "a  plague."  At  Charleston,  said  he,  the 
wharves  were  stacked  and  the  stores  and  ships  packed  with  the 
bales,  and  the  four  daily  papers  and  all  the  patrons  of  the  hotel 
were  "teeming  with  cotton."  At  Augusta  the  thoroughfares  were 
thronged  with  groaning  wagons,  the  warehouses  were  glutted,  the 
open  places  were  stacked,  and  the  steamboats  and  barges  hidden 
by  their  loads.  On  the  road  beyond,  migrating  planters  and 
slaves  bound  for  the  west,  "  'where  the  cotton  land  is  not  worn 
out,' "  met  cotton-laden  wagons  townward  bound,  whereupon 
the  price  of  the  staple  was  the  chief  theme  of  roadside  conversa- 
tion. Occasionally  a  wag  would  have  his  jest.  The  traveler 
reported  a  tilt  between  two  wagoners :  "  'What's  cotton  in  Au- 
gusta ?'  says  the  one  with  a  load.  .  .  .  'It's  cotton,'  says  the  other. 
*I  know  that,'  says  the  first,  'but  what  is  it?'  'Why,'  says  the 
other,  'I  tell  you  it's  cotton.  Cotton  is  cotton  in  Augusta  and 
everywhere  else  that  I  ever  heard  of.'  *I  know  that  as  well  as 
you,'  says  the  first,  'but  what  does  cotton  bring  in  Augusta?' 
'Why,  it  brings  nothing  there,  but  everybody  brings  cotton.'  " 
Whereupon  the  baffled  inquirer  appropriately  relieved  his  feel- 
ings and  drove  on.  At  his  crossing  of  the  Oconee  River  the  trav- 
eler saw  pole-boats  laden  with  bales  twelve  tiers  high;  at  Mill- 
edgeville  and  Macon  cotton  was  the  absorbing  theme;  in  the 
newly  opened  lands  beyond  he  "found  cotton  land  speculators 
thicker  than  locusts  in  Egypt" ;  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mont- 
gomery cotton  fields  adjoined  one  another  in  a  solid  stretch  fot. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  213 

fourteen  miles  along  the  road;  Montgomery  was  congested  be- 
yond the  capacity  of  the  boats ;  and  journeying  thence  to  Mobile 
he  "met  and  overtook  nearly  one  hundred  cotton  waggons  trav- 
elling over  a  road  so  bad  that  a  state  prisoner  could  hardly  walk 
through  it  to  make  his  escape."  As  to  Mobile,  it  was  "a  recep- 
tacle monstrous  for  the  article.  Look  which  way  you  will  you 
see  it,  and  see  it  moving;  keel  boats,  steamboats,  ships,  brigs, 
schooners,  wharves,  stores,  and  press-houses,  all  appeared  to  be 
full;  and  I  believe  that  in  the  three  days  I  was  there,  boarding 
with  about  one  hundred  cotton  factors,  cotton  merchants  and 
cotton  planters,  I  must  have  heard  the  word  cotton  pronounced 
more  than  three  thousand  times."  New  Orleans  had  a  similar 
glut. 

On  the  journey  up  the  Mississippi  the  plaint  heard  by  this  trav- 
eler from  fellow  passengers  who  lived  at  Natchitoches,  was  that 
they  could  not  get  enough  boats  to  bring  the  cotton  down  the 
Red.  The  descending  steamers  and  barges  on  the  great  river 
itself  were  half  of  them  heavy  laden  with  cotton  and  at  the  head 
of  navigation  on  the  Tennessee,  in  northwestern  Alabama,  bales 
enough  were  waiting  to  fill  a  dozen  boats.  "The  Tennesseeans," 
said  he,  "think  that  no  state  is  of  any  account  but  their  own; 
Kentucky,  they  say,  would  be  if  it  could  grow  cotton,  but  as  it 
is,  it  is  good  for  nothing.  They  count  on  forty  or  fifty  thousand 
bales  going  from  Nashville  this  season;  that  is,  if  they  can  get 
boats  to  carry  it  all."  The  fleet  on  the  Cumberland  River  was 
doing  its  utmost,  to  the  discomfort  of  the  passengers ;  and  it  was 
not  until  the  traveler  boarded  a  steamer  for  St.  Louis  at  the  mid- 
dle of  March,  that  he  escaped  the  plague  which  had  surrounded 
him  for  seventy  days  and  seventy  nights.  This  boat,  at  last, 
"had  not  a  bale  of  cotton  on  board,  nor  did  I  hear  it  named  more 
than  twice  in  thirty-six  hours.  ...  I  had  a  pretty  tolerable 
night's  sleep,  though  I  dreamed  of  cotton."  ® 

This  obsession  was  not  without  its  undertone  of  disquiet. 
Foresighted  men  were  apprehensive  lest  the  one-crop  system 
bring  distress  to  the  cotton  belt  as  it  had  to  Virginia.     As  early 

^Georgia  Courier  (Augusta,  Ga.),  Oct.  11,  1827,  reprinted  in  Plantation 
and  Frontier,  I,  283-289. 


214        .         AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

as  1818  a  few  newspaper  editors  ^^  began  to  decry  the  regime ; 
and  one  of  them  in  1821  rejoiced  in  a  widespread  prevalence  of 
rot  in  the  crop  of  the  preceding  year  as  a  blessing,  in  that  it 
staved  off  the  rapidly  nearing  time  when  the  staple's  price  would 
fall  below  the  cost  of  production.^^  A  marked  rise  of  the  price 
to  above  twenty  cents  a  pound  at  the  middle  of  the  decade,  how- 
ever, silenced  these  prophets  until  a  severe  decline  in  the  later 
twenties  prompted  the  sons  of  Jeremiah  to  raise  their  voices  again, 
and  the  political  crisis  procured  them  a  partial  hearing.  Poli- 
ticians were  advocating  the  home  production  of  cloth  and  food- 
stuffs as  a  demonstration  against  the  protective  tariff,  while  the 
economists  pleaded  for  diversification  for  the  sake  of  perma- 
nent prosperity,  regardless  of  tariff  rates.  One  of  them  wrote 
in  1827:  "That  we  have  cultivated  cotton,  cotton,  cotton  and 
bought  everything  else,  has  long  been  our  opprobrium.  It  is  time 
that  we  should  be  aroused  by  some  means  or  other  to  see  that 
such  a  course  of  conduct  will  inevitably  terminate  in  our  ultimate 
poverty  and  ruin.  Let  us  manufacture,  because  it  is  our  best 
policy.  Let  us  go  more  on  provision  crops  and  less  on  cotton, 
because  we  have  had  everything  about  us  poor  and  impoverished 
long  enough.  .  .  .  We  have  good  land,  unlimited  water  powers, 
capital  in  plenty,  and  a  patriotism  which  is  running  over  in  some 
places.  If  the  tariff  drives  us  to  this,  we  say,  let  the  name  be 
sacred  in  all  future  generations."  ^^  Next  year  William  Ellison 
of  the  South  Carolina  uplands  welcomed  even  the  low  price  of 
cotton  as  a  lever  ^^  which  might  pry  the  planters  out  of  the  cotton 
rut  and  shift  them  into  industries  less  exhausting  to  the  soil. 

But  in  the  breast  of  the  lowlander,  Wilham  Elliott,  the  depres- 
sion of  the  cotton  market  produced  merely  a  querulous  complaint 
that  the  Virginians,  by  rushing  into  the  industry  several  years 
before  when  the  prices  were  high,  had  spoiled  the  market.  Each 
region,  said  he,  ought  to  devote  itself  to  the  staples  best  suited 
to  its  climate  and  soil ;  this  was  the  basis  of  profitable  commerce. 
The  proper  policy  for  Virginia  and  most  of  North  Carolina  was 

"Augusta  Chronicle,  Dec.  23,  1818. 
^Georgia  Journal  (Milledgeville),  June  5,  1821. 
"Georgia  Courier  (Augusta),  June  21,  1827. 
"Southern  Agriculturist,  II,  13. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  *        315 

to  give  all  their  labor  spared  from  tobacco  to  the  growing  of 
corn  which  South  Carolina  would  gladly  buy  of  them  if  undis- 
turbed in  her  peaceful  concentration  upon  cotton.^*  The  advance 
of  cotton  prices  throughout  most  of  the  thirties  suspended  the 
discussion,  and  the  regime  went  on  virtually  unchanged.  As  an 
evidence  of  the  specialization  of  the  Piedmont  in  cotton,  it  was 
reported  in  1836  that  in  the  town  of  Columbia  alone  the  pur- 
chases of  bacon  during  the  preceding  year  had  amounted  to  three 
and  a  half  million  pounds.^^ 

The  world-wide  panic  of  1837  began  to  send  prices  down,  and 
the  specially  intense  cotton  crisis  of  1839  broke  the  market  so 
thoroughly  that  for  five  years  afterward  the  producers  had  to 
take  from  five  to  seven  cents  a  pound  for  their  crops.  Planters 
by  thousands  were  bankrupted,  most  numerously  in  the  inflated 
southwest;  and  thoughtful  men  everywhere  set  themselves 
afresh  to  study  the  means  of  salvation.  Edmund  Ruffin,  the 
Virginian  enthusiast  for  fertilizers,  was  employed  by  the  author- 
ity of  the  South  Carolina  legislature  to  make  an  agricultural  sur- 
vey of  that  state  with  a  view  to  recommending  improvements. 
Private  citizens  made  experiments  on  their  estates ;  and  the  news- 
papers and  the  multiplying  agricultural  journals  published  their 
reports  and  advice.  Most  prominent  among  the  cotton  belt 
planters  who  labored  in  the  cause  of  reform  were  ex-Governor 
James  H.  Hammond  of  South  Carolina,  Jethro  V.  Jones  of  Geor- 
gia, Dr.  N.  B.  Cloud  of  Alabama,  and  Dr.  Martin  W.  Philips  of 
Mississippi.  Of  these,  Hammond  was  chiefly  concerned  in 
swamp  drainage,  hillside  terracing,  forage  increase,  and  live- 
stock improvement ;  Jones  was  a  promoter  of  the  breeding  of  im- 
proved strains  of  cotton;  Cloud  was  a  specialist  in  fertilizing; 
and  Philips  was  an  all-round  experimenter  and  propagandist. 
Hammond  and  Philips,  who  were  both  spurred  to  experiments 
by  financial  stress,  have  left  voluminous  records  in  print  and 
manuscript.  Their  careers  illustrate  the  handicaps  under  which 
innovators  labored. 

K      ^*  Southern  Agriculturist,  I,  6l. 
*!      "Niks'  Register,  LI,  46. 


2i6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Hammond's  estate  ^®  lay  on  the  Carolina  side  of  the  Savannah 
River,  some  sixteen  miles  below  Augusta.  Impressed  by  the  de- 
pletion of  his  upland  soils,  he  made  a  journey  in  1838  through 
southwestern  Georgia  and  the  adjacent  portion  of  Florida  in 
search  of  a  new  location ;  but  finding  land  prices  inflated,  he  re- 
turned without  making  a  purchase,^'^  and  for  the  time  being 
sought  relief  at  home  through  the  improvement  of  his  meth- 
ods. He  wrote  in  1841  :  "I  have  tried  almost  all  systems,  and 
unlike  most  planters  do  not  like  what  is  old.  I  hardly  know 
anything  old  in  corn  or  cotton  planting  but  what  is  wrong." 
His  particular  enthusiasm  now  was  for  plow  cultivation  as 
against  the  hoe.  The  best  planter  within  his  acquaintance,  he 
said,  'Was  Major  Twiggs,  on  the  opposite  bank  of  the  Savannah, 
who  ian  thirty-four  plows  with  but  fourteen  hoes.  Ham- 
mond's own  plowmen  were  now  nearly  as  numerous  as  his 
full  hoe  hands,  and  his  crops  were  on  a  scale  of  twenty  acres  of 
cotton,  ten  of  corn  and  two  of  oats  to  the  plow.  He  was  fer- 
tilizing each  year  a  third  of  his  corn  acreage  with  cotton  seed, 
and  a  twentieth  of  his  cotton  with  barnyard  manure ;  and  he 
was  making  a  surplus  of  thirty  or  forty  bushels  of  corn  per  hand 
for  sale.^^  This  would  perhaps  have  contented  him  in  normal 
times,  but  the  severe  depression  of  cotton  prices  drove  him  to 
new  prognostications  and  plans.  His  confidence  in  the  staple 
was  destroyed,  he  said,  and  he  expected  the  next  crop  to  break 
the  market  forever  and  force  virtually  everyone  east  of  the 
Chattahoochee  to  abandon  the  culture.  "Here  and  there,"  he 
continued,  "a  plantation  may  be  found ;  but  to  plant  an  acre  that 
will  not  yield  three  hundred  pounds  net  will  be  folly.  I  cannot 
make  more  than  sixty  dollars  clear  to  the  hand  on  my  whole 
plantation  at  seven  cents.  .  .  .  The  western  plantations  have  got 
fairly  under  way;  Texas  is  coming  in,  and  the  game  is  up  with 
us."  He  intended  to  change  his  own  activities  in  the  main  to 
the  raising  of  cattle  and  hogs;  and  he  thought  also  of  sending 
part  of  his  slaves  to  Louisiana  or  Texas,  with  a  view  to  remov- 

"  Described  in  1846  in  the  American  Agriculturist,  VI,  113,  114. 

"  MS.  diary,  April  13  to  May  14,  1838,  in  Hammond  papers,  Library  of 
Congress. 

"  Letters  of  Hammond  to  William  Gilmore  Simms,  Jan.  27  and  Mch.  ft 
1841.    Hammond's  MS.  drafts  are  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  217 

ing  thither  himself  after  a  few  years  if  the  project  should  prove 
successful.^^  In  an  address  of  the  same  year  before  the  Agri- 
cultural Society  of  South  Carolina,  he  advised  those  to  emigrate 
who  intended  to  continue  producing  cotton,  and  recommended 
for  those  who  would  stay  in  the  Piedmont  a  diversified  hus- 
bandry including  tobacco  but  with  main  emphasis  upon  cereals 
and  livestock.^"  Again  at  the  end  of  1849,  he  voiced  similar 
views  at  the  first  annual  fair  of  the  South  Carolina  Institute. 
The  first  phase  of  the  cotton  industry,  said  he,  had  now  passed ; 
and  the  price  henceforward  would  be  fixed  by  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction, and  would  yield  no  great  profits  even  in  the  most  fer- 
tile areas.  The  rich  expanses  of  the  Southwest,  he  thought, 
could  meet  the  whole  world's  demand  at  a  cost  of  less  than  five 
cents  a  pound,  for  the  planters  there  could  produce  two  thou- 
sand pounds  of  lint  per  hand  while  those  in  the  Piedmont  could 
not  exceed  an  average  of  twelve  hundred  pounds.  This  margin 
of  difference  would  deprive  the  slaves  of  their  value  in  South 
Carolina  and  cause  their  owners  to  send  them  West,  unless  the 
local  system  of  industry  should  be  successfully  revolutionized. 
The  remedies  he  proposed  were  the  fertilization  of  the  soil,  the 
diversification  of  crops,  the  promotion  of  commerce,  and  the 
large  development  of  cotton  manufacturing.^^ 

Hammond  found  that  not  only  the  public  but  his  own  sons 
also,  with  the  exception  of  Harry,  were  cool  toward  his  advice 
and  example;  and  he  himself  yielded  to  the  temptation  of  the 
higher  cotton  prices  in  the  'fifties,  and  while  not  losing  interest 
in  cattle  and  small  grain  made  cotton  and  corn  his  chief  re- 
liance. He  appears  to  have  salved  his  conscience  in  this  re- 
lapse by  devoting  part  of  his  income  to  the  reclamation  of  a 
great  marsh  on  his  estate.  He  operated  two  plantations,  the  one 
at  his  home,  "Silver  Bluff,"  the  other,  "Cathwood,"  near  by. 
The  field  force  on  the  former  comprised  in  1850  sixteen  plow 
hands,  thirty-four  full  hoe  hands,  six  three-quarter  hands,  two 

^Letter  to  Isaac  W.  Hayne,  Jan.  21,  1841. 

**MS.  oration  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 

'^  James  H.  Hammond,  An  Address  delivered  before  the  South  Carolina 
Institute,  at  the  first  annual  Fair,  on  the  20th  November,  1849  (Charleston, 
1849). 


2i8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

half  hands  and  a  water  boy,  the  whole  rated  at  fifty-five  full 
hands.  At  Cathwood  the  force,  similarly  grouped,  was  rated  at 
seventy-one  hands;  but  at  either  place  the  force  was  commonly 
subject  to  a  deduction  of  some  ten  per  cent,  of  its  rated  strength, 
on  the  score  of  the  loss  of  time  by  the  "breeders  and  suckers" 
among  the  women.  In  addition  to  their  field  strength  and  the 
children,  of  whom  no  reckoning  was  made  in  the  schedule  of  em- 
ployments, the  two  plantations  together  had  five  stable  men,  two 
carpenters,  a  miller  and  job  worker,  a  keeper  of  the  boat  land- 
ing, three  nurses  and  two  overseers'  cooks;  and  also  thirty-five 
ditchers  in  the  reclamation  work. 

At  Silver  Bluff,  the  385  acres  in  cotton  were  expected  to  yield 
330  bales  of  400  pounds  each ;  the  400  acres  in  com  had  an  ex- 
pectation of  9850  bushels ;  and  10  acres  of  rice,  200  bushels.  At 
Cathwood  the  plantings  and  expectations  were  370  acres  in  cot- 
ton to  yield  280  bales,  280  in  corn  to  yield  5000  bushels,  15  in 
wheat  to  yield  100  bushels,  11  in  rye  to  yield  50,  and  2  in  rice 
to  yield  50.  In  financial  results,  after  earning  in  1848  only 
$4334.91,  which  met  barely  half  of  his  plantation  and  fam- 
ily expenses  for  the  year,  his  crop  sales  from  1849  to  1853 
ranged  from  seven  to  twenty  thousand  dollars  annually  in  cot- 
ton and  from  one  and  a  half  to  two  and  a  half  thousand  dollars 
in  corn.  His  gross  earnings  in  these  five  years  averaged  $16,- 
217.76,  while  his  plantation  expenses  averaged  $5393.87,  and  his 
family  outlay  $6392.67,  leaving  an  average  "clear  gain  per  an- 
num," as  he  called  it,  of  $4431.10.  The  accounting,  however, 
included  no  reckoning  of  interest  on  the  investment  or  of  any- 
thing else  but  money  income  and  outgo.  In  1859  Hammond  put 
upon  the  market  his  5500  acres  of  uplands  with  their  buildings, 
livestock,  implements  and  feed  supplies,  together  with  140 
slaves  including  70  full  hands.  His  purpose,  it  may  be  sur- 
mised, was  to  confine  his  further  operations  to  his  river  bot- 
toms. ^^ 

Philips,  whom  a  dearth  of  patients  drove  early  from  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine,  established  in  the  'thirties  a  plantation  which 
he  named  Log  Hall,  in  Hinds  County,  Mississippi.     After  nar- 

"  Hammond  MSS.,  Library  of  Congress. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  219 

rowly  escaping  the  loss  of  his  lands  and  slaves  in  1840  thrDUgh 
his  endorsement  of  other  men's  notes,  he  launched  into  experi- 
mental farming  and  agricultural  publication.  He  procured  va- 
rious fancy  breeds  of  cattle  and  hogs,  only  to  have  most  of  them 
die  on  his  hands.  He  introduced  new  sorts  of  grasses  and 
unfamiliar  vegetables  and  field  crops,  rarely  with  success. 
Meanwhile,  however,  he  gained  wide  reputation  through  his 
many  writings  in  the  periodicals,  and  in  the  'fifties  he  turned  this 
to  some  advantage  in  raising  fancy  strains  of  cotton  and  selling 
their  seed.  His  frequent  attendance  at  fairs  and  conventions 
and  his  devotion  to  his  experiments  and  to  his  pen  caused  him  to 
rely  too  heavily  upon  overseers  in  the  routine  conduct  of  his 
plantation.  In  consequence  one  or  more  slaves  occasionally 
took  to  the  woods ;  the  whole  force  was  frequently  in  bad  health ; 
and  his  women,  though  remarkably  fecund,  lost  most  of  their 
children  in  infancy.  In  some  degree  Philips  justified  the  prev- 
alent scorn  of  planters  for  "book  farming."  ^^ 

The  newspapers  and  farm  journals  everywhere  printed  argu- 
ments in  the  'forties  in  behalf  of  crop  diversification,  and  De- 
Bows  Review,  founded  in  1846,  joined  in  the  campaign ;  but  the 
force  of  habit,  the  dearth  of  marketable  substitutes  and  the 
charms  of  speculation  conspired  to  make  all  efforts  of  but  tem- 
porary avail.  The  belt  was  as  much  absorbed  in  cotton  in  the 
'fifties  as  it  had  ever  been  before. 

Meanwhile  considerable  improvement  had  been  achieved  in 
cotton  methods.  Mules,  mainly  bred  in  Tennessee,  Kentucky 
and  Missouri,  largely  replaced  the  less  effective  horses  and  oxen; 
the  introduction  of  horizontal  plowing  with  occasional  balks 
and  hillside  ditches,  checked  the  washing  of  the  Piedmont  soils ; 
the  use  of  fertilizers  became  fairly  common;  and  cotton  seed 
was  better  selected.  These  last  items  of  manures  and  seed  were 
the  subject  of  special  campaigns.  The  former  was  begun  as 
early  as  1808  by  the  Virginian  John  Taylor  of  Caroline  in  his 
"Arator"  essays,  and  was  furthered  by  the  publications  of  Ed- 

**  M.  W.  Phillips,  "Diary,"  F.  L.  Riley,  ed.,  in  the  Mississippi  Historical 
Society  Publications,  X,  305-481 ;  letters  of  Philips  in  the  American  Agri- 
culturist, DeBow's  Review,  etc.,  and  in  J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  The  Cotton  Plant- 
er's Manual,  pp.  98-123. 


220  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

mund  Ruffin  and  many  others.  But  an  adequate  available 
source  of  fertilizers  long  remained  a  problem  without  solution. 
Taylor  stressed  the  virtues  of  dung  and  rotation ;  but  the  dearth 
of  forage  hampered  the  keeping  of  large  stocks  of  cattle,  and 
soiling  crops  were  thought  commonly  to  yield  too  little  benefit 
for  the  expense  in  labor.  Ruffin  had  great  enthusiasm  for  the 
marl  or  phosphate  rock  of  the  Carolina  coast;  but  until  the  in- 
troduction in  much  later  decades  of  a  treatment  by  sulphuric 
acid  this  was  too  little  soluble  to  be  really  worth  while  as  a  plant 
food.  Lime  was  also  praised;  but  there  were  no  local  sources  of 
it  in  the  districts  where  it  was  most  needed. 

Cotton  seed,  in  fact,  proved  to  be  the  only  new  fertilizer  gen- 
erally available  in  moderate  abundance  prior  to  the  building  of 
the  railroads.  In  early  years  the  seed  lay  about  the  gins  as 
refuse  until  it  became  a  public  nuisance.  To  abate  it  the  vil- 
lage authorities  of  Sparta,  Georgia,  for  example,  adopted  in 
1807  an  ordinance  "that  the  owner  of  each  and  every  cotton  ma- 
chine within  the  limits  of  said  town  shall  remove  before  the  first 
day  of  May  in  each  year  all  seed  and  damaged  cotton  that  may 
be  about  such  machines,  or  dispose  of  such  seed  or  cotton  so  as 
to  prevent  its  unhealthy  putrefaction."  ^*  Soon  after  this  a 
planter  in  St.  Stephen's  Parish,  South  Carolina,  wrote :  "We 
find  from  experience  our  cotton  seed  one  of  the  strongest  ma- 
nures we  make  use  of  for  our  Indian  corn;  a  pint  of  fresh  seed 
put  around  or  in  the  corn  hole  makes  the  corn  produce  wonder- 
fully", ^^  but  it  was  not  until  the  lapse  of  another  decade  or  two 
that  such  practice  became  widespread.  In  the  thirties  Harriet 
Martineau  and  J.  S.  Buckingham  noted  that  in  Alabama  the  seed 
was  being  strewn  as  manure  on  a  large  scale.^^  As  an  improve- 
ment of  method  the  seed  was  now  being  given  in  many  cases  a 
preliminary  rotting  in  compost  heaps,  with  a  consequent  speed- 
ing of  its  availability  as  plant  food ;  ^^  and  cotton  seed  rose  to 

** Farmer's  Gazette  (Sparta,  Ga.),  Jan.  31,  1807. 

''Letter  of  John  Palmer.  Dec.  3,  1808,  to  David  Ramsay.  MS.  in  the 
Charleston  Library. 

"Harriet  Martineau,  Retrospect  of  Western  Travel  (London,  1838),  I, 
218;  I.  S.  Buckingham,  The  Slave  States  of  America  (London,  1842),  I, 

257- 

"D.  R.  Williams  of  South  Carolina  described  his  own  practice  to  this 
effect  in  an  essay  of   1825  contributed  to  the  American  Farmer  and  re- 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  221 

such  esteem  as  a  fertilizer  for  general  purposes  that  many  plant- 
ers rated  it  to  be  worth  from  sixteen  to  twenty-five  cents  a 
bushel  of  twenty-five  pounds.^^  As  early  as  1830,  furthermore 
a  beginning  was  made  in  extracting  cottonseed  oil  for  use  both 
in  painting  and  illumination,  and  also  in  utilizing  the  by-product 
of  cottonseed  meal  as  a  cattle  feed.^^  By  the  'fifties  the  oil  was 
coming  to  be  an  unheralded  substitute  for  olive  oil  in  table  use ; 
but  the  improvements  which  later  decades  were  to  introduce  in 
its  extraction  and  refining  were  necessary  for  the  raising  of  the 
manufacture  to  the  scale  of  a  substantial  industry. 

The  importation  of  fertilizers  began  with  guano.  This  ma- 
terial, the  dried  droppings  of  countless  birds,  was  discovered  in 
the  early  'forties  on  islands  off  the  coast  of  Peru ;  ^"  and  it  prompt- 
ly rose  to  such  high  esteem  in  England  that,  according  to  an  Amer- 
ican news  item,  Lloyd's  Hsted  for  1845  "Ot  less  than  a  thousand 
British  vessels  as  having  sailed  in  search  of  guano  cargoes. 
The  use  of  it  in  the  United  States  began  about  that  year;  and 
nowhere  was  its  reception  more  eager  than  in  the  upland  cotton 
belt.  Its  price  was  about  fifty  dollars  a  ton  in  the  seaports.  To 
stimulate  the  use  of  fertilizers,  the  Central  of  Georgia  Railroad 
Company  announced  in  1858  that  it  would  carry  all  manures  for 
any  distance  on  its  line  in  carload  lots  at  a  flat  rate  of  two  dol- 
lars per  ton;  and  the  connecting  roads  concurred  in  this  policy. 
In  consequence  the  Central  of  Georgia  carried  nearly  two  thou- 
sand tons  of  guano  in  1859,  and  more  than  nine  thousand  tons 
in  i860,  besides  lesser  quantities  of  lime,  salt  and  bone  dust. 
The  superintendent  reported  that  while  the  rate  failed  to  cover 
the  cost  of  transportation,  the  effect  in  increasing  the  amount  of 
cotton  to  be  freighted,  and  in  checking  emigration,  fully  compen- 
sated the  road.^^  A  contributor  to  the  North  American  Review 
in  January,  1861,  wrote :     "The  use  of  guano  is  increasing.    The 

printed  in  H.  T.  Cook,  The  Life  and  Legacy  of  David  R.  Williams  (New 
York,  1916),  pp.  226,  227. 

^J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  p.  99;  Robert  Russell, 
North  America,  p.  269. 

'''Southern  Agriculturist,  II,  563;  American  Farmer,  II,  98;  H.  T.  Cook, 
Life  and  Legacy  of  David  R.  Williams,  pp.  197-209. 

^'^  American  Agriculturist,  III,  283. 

''Central  of  Georgia  Railroad  Company  Reports,  1858-1860. 


222  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

average  return  for  each  pound  used  in  the  cotton  field  is  esti- 
mated to  be  a  pound  and  a  half  of  cotton;  and  the  planter  who 
could  raise  but  three  bales  to  the  hand  on  twelve  acres  of  ex- 
hausted soil  has  in  some  instances  by  this  appliance  realized  ten 
bales  from  the  same  force  and  area.  In  North  Carolina  guano 
is  reported  to  accelerate  the  growth  of  the  plant,  and  this  en- 
courages the  culture  on  the  northern  border  of  the  cotton-field, 
where  early  frosts  have  proved  injurious." 

Widespread  interest  in  agricultural  improvement  was  reported 
by  DeBow's  Review  in  the  'fifties,  taking  the  form  partly  of  local 
and  general  fairs,  partly  of  efforts  at  invention.  A  citizen  of 
Alabama,  for  example,  announced  success  in  devising  a  cotton 
picking  machine ;  but  as  in  many  subsequent  cases  in  the  same 
premises,  the  proclamation  was  premature. 

As  to  improved  breeds  of  cotton,  public  interest  appears  to 
have  begun  about  1820  in  consequence  of  surprisingly  good  re- 
sults from  seed  newly  procured  from  Mexico.,  These  were  in 
a  few  years  widely  distributed  under  the  name  of  Petit  Gulf  cot- 
ton. Colonel  Vick  of  Mississippi  then  began  to  breed  strains 
from  selected  seed;  and  others  here  and  there  followed  his  ex- 
ample, most  of  them  apparently  using  the  Mexican  type.  The 
more  dignified  of  the  planters  who  prided  themselves  on  selling 
nothing  but  cotton,  would  distribute  among  their  friends  par- 
cels of  seed  from  any  specially  fine  plants  they  might  encounter 
in  their  fields,  and  make  little  ado  about  it.  Men  of  a  more 
flamboyant  sort,  such  as  M.  W.  Philips,  contemning  such  "ruf- 
fle-shirt cant,"  would  christen  their  strains  with  attractive  names, 
publish  their  virtues  as  best  they  might,  and  offer  their  fancy 
seed  for  sale  at  fancy  prices.  Thus  in  1837  the  Twin-seed  or 
Okra  cotton  was  in  vogue,  selling  at  many  places  for  five  dol- 
lars a  quart.  In  1839  this  was  eclipsed  by  the  Alvarado  strain, 
which  its  sponsors  computed  from  an  instance  of  one  heavily 
fruited  stalk  nine  feet  high  and  others  not  so  prodigious,  might 
yield  three  thousand  pounds  per  acre.^^  Single  Alvarado  seeds 
were  sold  at  fifty  cents  each,  or  a  bushel  might  be  had  at  $160. 
In  the  succeeding  years  Vick's  Hundred  Seed,  Brown's,  Pitt's, 

*'  Southern  Banner  (Athens,  Ga.),  Sept.  20,  1839. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  223 

Prolific,  Sugar  Loaf,  Guatemala,  Cluster,  Hogan's,  Banana, 
Pomegranate,  Dean,  Multibolus,  Mammoth,  Mastodon  and  many 
others  competed  for  attention  and  sale.  Some  proved  worth 
while  either  in  increasing  the  yield,  or  in  producing  larger  bolls 
and  thereby  speeding  the  harvest,  or  in  reducing  the  proportion- 
ate weight  of  the  seed  and  increasing  that  of  the  lint;  but  the 
test  of  planting  proved  most  of  them  to  be  merely  commonplace 
and  not  worth  the  cost  of  carriage.  Extreme  prices  for  seed 
of  any  strain  were  of  course  obtainable  only  for  the  first  year 
or  two;  and  the  temptation  to  make  fraudulent  announcement 
of  a  wonder-working  new  type  was  not  always  resisted. 
Honest  breeders  improved  the  yield  considerably;  but  the  suc- 
cession of  hoaxes  roused  abundant  skepticism.  In  1853  a 
certain  Miller  of  Mississippi  confided  to  the  public  the  fact 
that  he  had  discovered  by  chance  a  strain  which  would  yield 
three  hundred  pounds  more  of  seed  cotton  per  acre  than  any 
other  sort  within  his  knowledge,  and  he  alluringly  named  it  Ac- 
cidental Poor  Land  Cotton.  John  Farrar  of  the  new  railroad 
town  Atlanta  was  thereby  moved  to  irony.  "This  kind  of  cot- 
ton," he  wrote  in  a  public  letter,  "would  run  a  three  million  bale 
crop  up  to  more  than  four  millions ;  and  this  would  reduce  the 
price  probably  to  four  or  five  cents.  Don't  you  see,  Mr.  Miller, 
that  we  had  better  let  you  keep  and  plant  your  seed?  You  say 
that  you  had  rather  plant  your  crop  with  them  than  take  a  dol- 
lar a  pint.  .  .  .  Let  us  alone,  friend,  we  are  doing  pretty  well — 
we  might  do  worse."  ^^ 

In  the  sea-island  branch  of  the  cotton  industry  the  methods 
differed  considerably  from  those  in  producing  the  shorter  staple. 
Seed  selection  was  much  more  commonly  practiced,  and  extraor- 
dinary care  was  taken  in  ginning  and  packing  the  harvest.  The 
earliest  and  favorite  lands  for  this  crop  were  those  of  exceed- 
ingly light  soil  on  the  islands  fringing  the  coast  of  Georgia  and 
South  Carolina.  At  first  the  tangle  of  live-oak  and  palmetto 
roots  discouraged  the  use  of  the  plow ;  and  afterward  the  need 
of  heavy  fertilization  with  swamp  mud  and  seaweed  kept  the 
acreage  so  small  in  proportion  to  the  laborers  that  hoes  contin- 

"J.  A.  Turner,  ed..  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  p.  98-128. 


224  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

ued  to  be  the  prevalent  means  of  tillage.  Operations  were  com- 
monly on  the  basis  of  six  or  seven  acres  to  the  hand,  half  in  cot- 
ton and  the  rest  in  corn  and  sweet  potatoes.  In  the  swamps  on 
the  mainland  into  which  this  crop  was  afterwards  extended,  the 
use  of  the  plow  permitted  the  doubling  of  the  area  per  hand; 
but  the  product  of  the  swamp  lands  was  apparently  never  of  the 
first  grade. 

The  fields  were  furrowed  at  five-foot  intervals  during  the 
winter,  bedded  in  early  spring,  planted  in  late  April  or  early 
May,  cultivated  until  the  end  of  July,  and  harvested  from  Sep- 
tember to  December.  The  bolls  opened  but  narrowly  and  the 
fields  had  to  be  reaped  frequently  to  save  the  precious  lint  from 
damage  by  the  weather.  Accordingly  the  pickers  are  said  to 
have  averaged  no  more  than  twenty-five  pounds  a  day.  The 
preparation  for  market  required  the  greatest  painstaking  of  all. 
First  the  seed  cotton  was  dried  on  a  scaffold ;  next  it  was  whipped 
for  the  removal  of  trash  and  sand ;  then  it  was  carefully  sorted 
into  grades  by  color  and  fineness ;  then  it  went  to  the  roller  gins, 
whence  the  lint  was  spread  upon  tables  where  women  picked  out 
every  stained  or  matted  bit  of  the  fiber;  and  finally  when  gently 
packed  into  sewn  bags  it  was  ready  for  market.  A  few  gin 
houses  were  equipped  in  the  later  decades  with  steam  power ;  but 
most  planters  retained  the  system  of  a  treadle  for  each  pair  of 
rollers  as  the  surest  safeguard  of  the  delicate  filaments.  A  plan- 
tation gin  house  was  accordingly  a  simple  barn  with  perhaps  a 
dozen  or  two  foot-power  gins,  a  separate  room  for  the  whipping, 
a  number  of  tables  for  the  sorting  and  moting,  and  a  round  hole 
in  the  floor  to  hold  open  the  mouth  of  the  long  bag  suspended  for 
the  packing.^*  In  preparing  a  standard  bale  of  three  hundred 
pounds,  it  was  reckoned  that  the  work  required  of  the  laborers 
at  the  gin  house  was  as  follows :  the  dryer,  one  day ;  the  whipper, 
two  days ;  the  sorters,  at  fifty  pounds  of  seed  cotton  per  day  for 

•*  The  culture  and  apparatus  are  described  by  W.  B.  Seabrook,  Memoir 
on  Cotton,  pp.  23-25;  Thomas  Spaulding  in  the  American  Agriculturist, 
III,  244-246;  R.  F.  W.  Allston,  £^^03^  on  Sea  Coast  Crops  (Charleston, 
1854),  reprinted  in  DcBoufs  Review,  XVI,  589-615;  J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cot- 
ton Planter's  Manual,  pp.  131-136.  The  routine  of  operations  is  illustrated 
in  the  diary  of  Thomas  P.  Ravenel,  of  Woodboo  plantation,  1847-1850, 
printed  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  195-208. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  225 

each,  thirty  days;  the  ginners,  each  taking  125  pounds  in  the 
seed  per  day  and  delivering  therefrom  25  pounds  of  lint,  twelve 
days;  the  meters,  at  43  pounds,  seven  days;  the  inspector  and 
packer,  two  days;  total  fifty-four  days. 

The  roller  gin  was  described  in  a  most  untechnical  manner  by 
Basil  Hall:  "It  consists  of  tvi^o  little  wooden  rollers,  each  about 
as  thick  as  a  man's  thumb,  placed  horizontally  and  touching  each 
other.  On  these  being  put  into  rapid  motion,  handfulls  of  the 
cotton  are  cast  upon  them,  which  of  course  are  immediately 
sucked  in.  ...  A  sort  of  comb  fitted  with  iron  teeth  ...  is 
made  to  wag  up  and  down  with  considerable  velocity  in  front 
of  the  rollers.  This  rugged  comb,  which  is  equal  in  length  to 
the  rollers,  lies  parallel  to  them,  with  the  sharp  ends  of  its  teeth 
almost  in  contact  with  them.  By  the  quick  wagging  motion 
given  to  this  comb  by  the  machinery,  the  buds  of  cotton  cast 
upon  the  rollers  are  torn  open  just  as  they  are  beginning  to  be 
sucked  in.  The  seeds,  now  released  ...  fly  off  like  sparks  to 
the  right  and  left,  while  the  cotton  itself  passes  between  the  roll- 
ers." 35 

As  to  yields  and  proceeds,  a  planter  on  the  Georgia  seaboard 
analyzed  his  experience  from  1830  to  1847  ^^  follows:  the  har- 
vest average  per  acre  ranged  from  68  pounds  of  lint  in  1846  to 
223  pounds  in  1842,  with  a  general  average  for  the  whole  period 
of  137  pounds ;  the  crop's  average  price  per  pound  ranged  from 
14  cents  in  1847  to  41  centj  in^j8^  with  a  general  average  of 
233^  cents ;  and  the  net  proceeds  per  hand  were  highest  at  $137 
in  1835,  lowest  at  $41  in  1836,  and  averaged  $83  for  the  eighteen 
years.^^ 

In  the  cotton  belt  as  a  whole  the  census  takers  of  1850  enu- 
merated 74,031  farms  and  plantations  each  producing  five  bales 
or  more,^'^  and  they  reckoned  the  crop  at  2,445,793  bales  of  four 
hundred  pounds  each.  Assuming  that  five  bales  were  commonly 
the  product  of  one  full  hand,  and  leaving  aside  a  tenth  of  the 
gross  output  as  grown  perhaps  on  farms  where  the  cotton  was 
not  the  main  product,  it  appears  that  the  cotton  farms  and  plan- 

•*  Basil  Hall,  Travels  in  North  America  (Edinburgh,  1829),  III,  221,  222. 
*'J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  pp.  128,  129. 
*'  Compendium  of  the  Seventh  Census,  p.  178 


226  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 


I 


tations  averaged  some  thirty  bales  each,  and  employed  on  the 
average  about  six  full  hands.  That  is  to  say,  there  were  very 
many  more  small  farms  than  large  plantations  devoted  to  cot- 
ton; and  among  the  plantations,  furthermore,  it  appears  that 
very  few  were  upon  a  scale  entitling  them  to  be  called  great,  for 
the  nature  of  the  industry  did  not  encourage  the  engrossment  of 
more  than  sixty  laborers  under  a  single  manager.^^  It  is  true 
that  some  proprietors  operated  on  a  much  larger  scale  than  this. 
It  was  reported  in  1859,  for  example,  that  Joseph  Bond  of  Geor- 
gia had  marketed  2199  bales  of  his  produce,  that  numerous 
Louisiana  planters,  particularly  about  Concordia  Parish,  com- 
monly exceeded  that  output;  that  Dr.  Duncan  of  Mississippi  had 
a  crop  of  3000  bales ;  and  that  L.  R.  Marshall,  who  lived  at 
Natchez  and  had  plantations  in  Louisiana,  Mississippi  and  Ar- 
kansas, was  accustomed  to  make  more  than  four  thousand 
bales.^^  The  explanation  lies  of  course  in  the  possession  by  such 
men  of  several  more  or  less  independent  plantations  of  manage- 
able size.  Bond's  estate,  for  example,  comprised  not  less  than 
six  plantations  in  and  about  Lee  County  in  southwestern  Geor- 
gia, while  his  home  was  in  the  town  of  Macon.  The  areas  of 
these,  whether  cleared  or  in  forest,  ranged  from  1305  to  4756 
acres.*"  But  however  large  may  have  been  the  outputs  of  excep- 
tionally great  planters,  the  fact  remains  on  the  other  hand  that 
virtually  half  of  the  total  cotton  crop  each  year  was  made  by 
farmers  whose  slaves  were  on  the  average  hardly  more  numer- 
ous than  the  white  members  of  their  own  families.  The  planta- 
tion system  nevertheless  dominated  the  regime. 

The  British  and  French  spinners,  solicitous  for  their  supply 
of  material,  attempted  at  various  times  and  places  during  the 
ante-bellum  period  to  enlarge  the  production  of  cotton  where  it 
was  already  established  and  to  introduce  it  into  new  regions. 
The  result  was  a  complete  failure  to  lessen  the  predominance  of 
the  United  States  as  a  source.  India,  Egypt  and  Brazil  might 
enlarge  their  outputs  considerably  if  the  rates  in  the  market  were 

^'DeBon/s  Review,  VIII,  16. 
'^Ibid.,  XXVI,  581. 

*"  Advertisement  of  Bond's  executors  offering  the  plantations  for  sale  in 
the  Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  Nov.  8,  1859. 


THE  COTTON  REGIME  227 

raised  to  twice  or  thrice  their  wonted  levels ;  but  so  long  as  the 
price  held  a  moderate  range  the  leadership  of  the  American  cot- 
ton belt  could  not  be  impaired,  for  its  facilities  were  unequaled. 
Its  long  growing  season,  hot  in  summer  by  day  and  night,  was 
perfectly  congenial  to  the  plant,  its  dry  autumns  permitted  the 
reaping  of  full  harvests,  and  its  frosty  winters  decimated  the  in- 
sect pests.  Its  soil  was  abundant,  its  skilled  managers  were  in 
full  supply,  its  culture  was  well  systematized,  and  its  labor  ade- 
quate for  the  demand.  To  these  faciUties  there  was  added  in 
the  Southern  thought  of  the  time,  as  no  less  essential  for  the  per- 
manence of  the  cotton  belt's  primacy,  the  plantation  system  and 
the  institution  of  slavery. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
.  TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS 

THE  tone  and  method  of  a  plantation  were  determined 
partly  by  the  crop  and  the  lie  of  the  land,  partly  by  the 
characters  of  the  master  and  his  men,  partly  by  the  local 
tradition.  Some  communities  operated  on  the  basis  of  time- 
work,  or  the  gang  system ;  others  on  piece-work  or  the  task  sys- 
tem. The  former  was  earlier  begun  and  far  more  widely  spread, 
for  Sir  Thomas  Dale  used  it  in  drilling  the  Jamestown  settlers  at 
their  work,  it  was  adopted  in  turn  on  the  "particular"  and  pri- 
vate plantations  thereabout,  and  it  was  spread  by  the  migration  of 
the  sons  and  grandsons  of  Virginia  throughout  the  middle  and 
western  South  as  far  as  Missouri  and  Texas.  The  task  system, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  almost  wholly  confined  to  the  rice  coast. 
The  gang  method  was  adaptable  to  operations  on  any  scale. 
If  a  proprietor  were  of  the  great  majority  who  had  but  one  or 
two  families  of  slaves,  he  and  his  sons  commonly  labored  along- 
side the  blacks,  giving  not  less  than  step  for  step  at  the  plow 
and  stroke  for  stroke  with  the  hoe.  If  there  were  a  dozen  or 
two  working  hands,  the  master,  and  perhaps  the  son,  instead  of 
laboring  manually  would  superintend  the  work  of  the  plow 
and  hoe  gangs.  If  the  slaves  numbered  several  score  the  master 
and  his  family  might  live  in  leisure  comparative  or  complete, 
while  delegating  the  field  supervision  to  an  overseer,  aided  per- 
haps by  one  or  more  slave  foremen.  When  an  estate  was  inher- 
ited by  minor  children  or  scattered  heirs,  or  where  a  single  pro- 
prietor had  several  plantations,  an  overseer  would  be  put  into 
full  charge  of  an  establishment  so  far  as  the  routine  work  was 
concerned;  and  when  the  plantations  in  one  ownership  were 
quite  numerous  or  of  a  great  scale  a  steward  might  be  employed 
to  supervise  the  several  overseers.    Thus  in  the  latter  part  of  the 

228 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS  229 

eighteenth  century,  Robert  Carter  of  Nomoni  Hall  on  the  Poto- 
mac had  a  steward  to  assist  in  the  administration  of  his  many 
scattered  properties,  and  Washington  after  dividing  the  Mount 
Vernon  lands  into  several  units  had  an  overseer  upon  each  and 
a  steward  for  the  whole  during  his  own  absence  in  the  public 
service.  The  neighboring  estate  of  Gunston  Hall,  belonging  to 
George  Mason,  was  likewise  divided  into  several  units  for  the 
sake  of  more  detailed  supervision.  Even  the  103  slaves  of 
James  Mercer,  another  neighbor,  were  distributed  on  four  plan- 
tations under  the  management  in  1771  of  Thomas  Oliver.  Of 
these  there  were  54  slaves  on  Marlborough,  19  on  Acquia,  12  on 
Belviderra  and  9  on  Accokeek,  besides  9  hired  for  work  else- 
where. Of  the  94  not  hired  out,  64  were  field  workers.  Nearly 
all  the  rest,  comprising  the  house  servants,  the  young  children,  the 
invalids  and  the  superannuated,  were  lodged  on  Marlborough, 
which  was  of  course  the  owner's  "home  place."  Each  of  the  four 
units  had  its  implements  of  husbandry,  and  three  of  them  had  to- 
bacco houses ;  but  the  barn  and  stables  were  concentrated  on 
Marlborough.  This  indicates  that  the  four  plantations  were 
parts  of  a  single  tract  so  poor  in  soil  that  only  pockets  here  and 
there  would  repay  cultivation.*  This  presumption  is  reinforced 
by  an  advertisement  which  Mercer  published  in  1767:  "Wanted 
soon,  ...  a  farmer  who  will  undertake  the  management  of 
about  80  slaves,  all  settled  within  six  miles  of  each  other,  to  be 
employed  in  making  of  grain."  ^  In  such  a  case  the  superin- 
tendent would  combine  the  functions  of  a  regular  overseer  on 
the  home  place  with  those  of  a  "riding  boss"  inspecting  the  work 
of  the  three  small  outlying  squads  from  time  to  time.  Grain 
crops  would  facilitate  this  by  giving  more  frequent  intermissions 
than  tobacco  in  the  routine.    The  Mercer  estate  might  indeed  be 

*  Robert  Carter's  plantation  aflfairs  are  noted  in  Philip  V.  Fithian,  Jour- 
nal and  Letters  (Princeton,  N.  J.,  1900)  ;  the  Gunston  Hall  estate  is  de- 
scribed in  Kate  M.  Rowland,  Life  of  George  Mason  (New  York,  1892),  I, 
98-102;  many  documents  concerning  Mt.  Vernon  are  among  the  George 
Washington  MSS.  in  the  Library  of  Congress,  and  Washington's  letters, 
1793-1797.  to  his  steward  are  printed  in  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society 
Memoirs,  v.  4;  of  James  Mercer's  establishments  an  inventory  taken  in 
1771  is  reproduced  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  249. 

*  Virginia  Gazette  (Williamsburg,  Va.),  Oct.  22,  1767,  reprinted  in  Plan- 
tation and  Frontier,  I,  133. 


230  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

more  correctly  described  as  a  plantation  and  three  subsidiary 
farms  than  as  a  group  of  four  plantations.  The  occurrence  of  to- 
bacco houses  in  the  inventory  and  of  grain  crops  alone  in  the  ad- 
vertisement shows  a  recent  abandonment  of  the  tobacco  staple; 
and  the  fact  of  Mercer's  financial  embarrassment  ^  suggests,  v^hat 
w^as  common  knowledge,  that  the  plantation  system  was  ill  suited 
to  grain  production  as  a  central  industry. 

The  organization  and  routine  of  the  large  plantations  on  the 
James  River  in  the  period  of  an  agricultural  renaissance  are  il- 
lustrated in  the  inventory  and  work  journal  of  Belmead,  in  Pow- 
hatan County,  owned  by  Philip  St,  George  Cocke  and  superin- 
tended by  S.  P.  Collier.*  At  the  beginning  of  1854  the  125 
slaves  were  scheduled  as  follows :  the  domestic  staff  comprised 
a  butler,  two  waiters,  four  housemaids,  a  nurse,  a  laundress,  a 
seamstress,  a  dairy  maid  and  a  gardener;  the  field  corps  had 
eight  plowmen,  ten  male  and  twelve  female  hoe  hands,  two 
wagoners  and  four  ox  drivers,  with  two  cooks  attached  to  its 
service;  the  stable  and  pasture  staff  embraced  a  carriage  driver, 
a  hostler,  a  stable  boy,  a  shepherd,  a  cowherd  and  a  hog  herd; 
in  outdoor  crafts  there  were  two  carpenters  and  five  stone  ma- 
sons ;  in  indoor  industries  a  miller,  two  blacksmiths,  two  shoe- 
makers, five  women  spinners  and  a  woman  weaver;  and  in  addi- 
tion there  were  forty-five  children,  one  invalid,  a  nurse  for  the 
sick,  and  an  old  man  and  two  old  women  hired  off  the  place, 
and  finally  Nancy  for  whom  no  age,  value  or  classification  is 
given.  The  classified  workers  comprised  none  younger  than  six- 
teen years  except  the  stable  boy  of  eleven,  a  waiter  of  twelve, 
and  perhaps  some  of  the  housemaids  and  spinners  whose  ages 
are  not  recorded.  At  the  other  extreme  there  were  apparently 
no  slaves  on  the  plantation  above  sixty  years  old  except  Randal, 
a  stone  mason,  who  in  spite  of  his  sixty-six  years  was  valued 
at  $300,  and  the  following  who  had  no  appraisable  value:  Old 
Jim  the  shepherd.  Old  Maria  the  dairy  maid,  and  perhaps  two 
of  the  spinners.     The  highest  appraisal,  $800,  was  given  to  Pay- 

'S.  M.  Hamilton  ed.,  Letters  to  Washington,  IV,  286. 

*  These  records  are  in  the  possession  of  Wm.  Bridges  of  Richmond,  Va. 
For  copies  of  them,  as  well  as  for  many  other  valuable  items,  I  am  in- 
debted to  Alfred  H.  Stone  of  Dunleith,  Miss. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      231 

ton,  an  ox  driver,  twenty-eight  years  old.  The  $700  class  com- 
prised six  plowmen,  five  field  hands,  the  three  remaining  ox 
drivers,  both  wagoners,  both  blacksmiths,  the  carriage  driver, 
four  stone  masons,  a  carpenter,  and  Ned  the  twenty-eight  year 
old  invalid  whose  illness  cannot  have  been  chronic.  The  other 
working  men  ranged  between  $250  and  $500  except  the  two 
shoemakers  whose  rating  was  only  $200  each.  None  of  the 
women  were  appraised  above  $400,  which  was  the  rating  also  of 
the  twelve  and  thirteen  year  old  boys.  The  youngest  children 
were  valued  at  $100  each.  These  ratings  were  all  quite  conserva- 
tive for  that  period.  The  fact  that  an  ox  driver  overtopped  all 
others  in  appraisal  suggests  that  the  artisans  were  of  little  skill. 
The  masons,  the  carpenters  and  various  other  specialists  were 
doubtless  impressed  as  field  hands  on  occasion. 

The  livestock  comprised  twelve  mules,  nine  work  horses,  a 
stallion,  a  brood  mare,  four  colts,  six  pleasure  horses  and  ''Wil- 
liam's team"  of  five  head;  sixteen  work  oxen,  a  beef  ox,  two 
bulls,  twenty-three  cows,  and  twenty-six  calves;  150  sheep  and 
115  swine.  The  implements  included  two  reaping  machines, 
three  horse  rakes,  two  wheat  drills,  two  straw  cutters,  three 
wheat  fans,  and  a  corn  sheller;  one  two-horse  and  four  four- 
horse  wagons,  two  horse  carts  and  four  ox  carts ;  nine  one-horse 
and  twelve  two-horse  plows,  six  colters,  six  cultivators,  eight 
harrows,  two  earth  scoops,  and  many  scythes,  cradles,  hoes,  pole- 
axes  and  miscellaneous  farm  implements  as  well  as  a  loom  and 
six  spinning  wheels. 

The  bottom  lands  of  Belmead  appear  to  have  been  cultivated 
in  a  rotation  of  tobacco  and  corn  the  first  year,  wheat  the  second 
and  clover  the  third,  while  the  uplands  had  longer  rotations  with 
more  frequent  crops  of  clover  and  occasional  interspersions  of 
oats.  The  work  journal  of  1854  shows  how  the  gang  dove- 
tailed the  planting,  cultivation,  and  harvesting  of  the  several 
crops  and  the  general  upkeep  of  the  plantation. 

On  specially  moist  days  from  January  to  the  middle  of  April 
all  hands  were  called  to  the  tobacco  houses  to  strip  and  prize-the 
cured  crop;  when  the  ground  was  frozen  they  split  and  hauled 
firewood  and  rails,  built  fences,  hauled  stone  to  line  the  ditches 


232  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

or  build  walls  and  culverts,  hauled  wheat  to  the  mill,  tobacco  and 
flour  to  the  boat  landing,  and  guano,  land  plaster,  barnyard  ma- 
nure and  straw  to  the  fields  intended  for  the  coming  tobacco  crop  ; 
and  in  milder  dry  weather  they  spread  and  plowed  in  these 
fertilizers,  prepared  the  tobacco  seed  bed  by  heaping  and  burn- 
ing brush  thereon  and  spading  it  mellow,  and  also  sowed  clover 
and  oats  in  their  appointed  fields.  In  April  also  the  potato  patch 
and  the  corn  fields  were  prepared,  and  the  corn  planted ;  and 
the  tobacco  bed  was  seeded  at  the  middle  of  the  month.  In 
early  May  the  corn  began  to  be  plowed,  and  the  soil  of  the  to- 
bacco fields  drawn  by  hoes  into  hills  with  additional  manure  in 
their  centers.  From  the  end  of  May  until  as  late  as  need  be  in 
July  the  occurrence  of  every  rain  sent  all  hands  to  setting  the 
tobacco  seedlings  in  their  hills  at  top  speed  as  long  as  the  ground 
stayed  wet  enough  to  give  prospect  of  success  in  the  process.  In 
the  interims  the  corn  cultivation  was  continued,  hay  was  har- 
vested in  the  clover  fields  and  the  meadows,  and  the  tobacco  fields 
first  planted  began  to  be  scraped  with  hoe  and  plow.  The  lat- 
ter half  of  June  was  devoted  mainly  to  the  harvesting  of  small 
grain  with  the  two  reaping  machines  and  the  twelve  cradles ;  and 
for  the  following  two  months  the  main  labor  force  was  divided 
between  thrashing  the  wheat  and  plowing,  hoeing,  worming 
and  suckering  the  tobacco,  while  the  expert  Daniel  was  day  after 
day  steadily  topping  the  plants.  In  late  August  the  plows  be- 
gan breaking  the  fallow  fields  for  wheat.  Early  in  September 
the  cutting  and  housing  of  tobacco  began,  and  continued  at  in- 
tervals in  good  weather  until  the  middle  of  October.  Then  the 
corn  was  harvested  and  the  sowing  of  wheat  was  the  chief  con- 
cern until  the  end  of  November  when  winter  plowing  was 
begun  for  the  next  year's  tobacco.  Two  days  in  December  were 
devoted  to  the  housing  of  ice;  and  Christmas  week,  as  well  as 
Easter  Monday  and  a  day  or  two  in  summer  and  fall,  brought 
leisure.  Throughout  the  year  the  overseer  inspected  the  negroes' 
houses  and  yards  every  Sunday  morning  and  regularly  reported 
them  in  good  order. 

The  greatest  of  the  tobacco  planters  in  this  period  was  Samuel 
Hairston,  whose  many  plantations  lying  in  the  upper  Piedmont  on 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS  233 

both  sides  of  the  Virginia-North  Carolina  boundary  were  re- 
ported in  1854  to  have  slave  populations  aggregating  some  1600 
souls,  and  whose  gardens  at  his  homestead  in  Henry  County, 
Virginia,  were  likened  to  paradise.  Of  his  methods  of  manage- 
ment nothing  more  is  known  than  that  his  overseers  were  sys- 
tematically superintended  and  that  his  negroes  were  commonly 
both  fed  and  clothed  with  the  products  of  the  plantations  them- 
selves.^ 

In  the  eastern  cotton  belt  a  notable  establishment  of  earlier 
decades  was  that  of  Governor  David  R.  Williams,  who  began 
operations  with  about  a  hundred  slaves  in  Chesterfield  County, 
South  Carolina,  near  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
increased  their  number  fivefold  before  his  death  in  1830.  While 
each  of  his  four  plantations  gave  adequate  yields  of  the  staple  as 
well  as  furnishing  their  own  full  supplies  of  corn  and  pork,  the 
central  feature  and  the  chief  source  of  prosperity  was  a  great 
bottom  tract  safeguarded  from  the  floods  of  the  Pee  Dee  by  a 
levee  along  the  river  front.  The  building  of  this  embankment 
was  but  one  of  many  enterprises  which  Williams  undertook  in 
the  time  spared  from  his  varied  political  and  military  services. 
Others  were  the  improvement  of  manuring  methods,  the  breed- 
ing of  mules,  the  building  of  public  bridges,  the  erection  and 
management  of  a  textile  factory,  the  launching  of  a  cottonseed 
oil  mill,  of  which  his  talents  might  have  made  a  success  even  in 
that  early  time  had  not  his  untimely  death  intervened.  The  pros- 
perity of  Williams'  main  business  in  the  face  of  his  multifarious, 
diversions  proves  that  his  plantation  affairs  were  administered 
in  thorough  fashion.  His  capable  wife  must  have  supplemented 
the  husband  and  his  overseers  constantly  and  powerfully  in  the 
conduct  of  the  routine.  The  neighboring  plantation  of  a  kins- 
man, Benjamin  F.  Williams,  was  likewise  notable  in  after  years 
for  its  highly  improved  upland  fields  as  well  as  for  the  excellent 
specialized  work  of  its  slave  craftsmen.^ 

"William  Chambers,  American  Slavery  and  Colour  (London,  1857),  pp. 
194.  I9S>  quoting  a  Richmond  newspaper  of  1854. 

'Harvey  T.  Cooke,  The  Life  and  Legacy  of  David  Rogerson  Williams 
(New  York,  1916),  chaps.  XIV,  XVI,  XIX,  XX,  XXV.  This  book, 
though  bearing  a  New  York  imprint,  is  actually  published,  as  I  have  been 
at  pains  to  learn,  by  Mr.  J.  W.  Norwood  of  Greenville,  South  Carolina. 


234  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

In  the  fertile  bottoms  on  the  Congaree  River  not  far  above 
Columbia,  lay  the  well  famed  estate  of  Colonel  Wade  Hampton, 
vi^hich  in  1846  had  some  sixteen  hundred  acres  of  cotton  and 
half  as  much  of  corn.  The  traveler,  when  reaching  it  after  long 
faring  past  the  slackly  kept  fields  and  premises  common  in  the 
region,  felt  equal  enthusiasm  for  the  drainage  and  the  fencing, 
the  avenues,  the  mansion  and  the  mill,  the  stud  of  blooded  horses, 
the  herd  of  Durham  cattle,  the  flock  of  long-wooled  sheep,  and 
the  pens  of  Berkshire  pigs.'^  Senator  McDuffie's  plantation  in 
the  further  uplands  of  the  Abbeville  district  was  likewise  pros- 
perous though  on  a  somewhat  smaller  scale.  Accretions  had  en- 
larged it  from  three  hundred  acres  in  1821  to  five  thousand  in 
1847,  when  it  had  147  slaves  of  all  ages.  Many  of  these  were 
devoted  to  indoor  employments,  and  seventy  were  field  workers 
using  twenty-four  mules.  The  750  acres  in  cotton  commonly 
yielded  crops  of  a  thousand  pounds  in  the  seed ;  the  325  acres  in 
corn  gave  twenty-five  or  thirty  bushels;  the  300  in  oats,  fifteen 
bushels ;  and  ten  acres  in  peas,  potatoes  and  squashes  yielded 
their  proportionate  contribution.^ 

The  conduct  and  earnings  of  a  cotton  plantation  fairly  typical 
among  those  of  large  scale,  may  be  gathered  from  the  overseer's 
letters  and  factor's  accounts  relating  to  Retreat,  which  lay  in 
Jefferson  County,  Georgia.  This  was  one  of  several  establish- 
ments founded  by  Alexander  Telfair  of  Savannah  and  inherited 
by  his  two  daughters,  one  of  whom  became  the  wife  of  W.  B. 
Hodgson.  For  many  years  Elisha  Cain  was  its  overseer.  The 
first  glimpse  which  the  correspondence  affords  is  in  the  fall  of 
1829,  some  years  after  Cain  had  taken  charge.  He  then  wrote 
to  Telfair  that  many  of  the  negroes  young  and  old  had  recently 
been  ill  with  fever,  but  most  of  them  had  recovered  without  a 
physician's  aid.  He  reported  further  that  a  slave  named  John 
had  run  away  "for  no  other  cause  than  that  he  did  not  feel  dis- 
posed to  be  governed  by  the  same  rules  and  regulations  that  the  <>* 

*  Described  by  R.  L.  Allen  in  the  American  Agriculturist,  VI,  20,  21. 
'  DeBow's  Review,  VI,  149. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      235 

other  negroes  on  the  land  are  governed  by."  Shortly  afterward 
John  returned  and  showed  willingness  to  do  his  duty.  But  now 
Cain  encountered  a  new  sort  of  trouble.  He  wrote  Telfair  in 
January,  1830:  "Your  negroes  have  a  disease  now  among  them 
that  I  am  fully  at  a  loss  to  know  what  I  had  best  to  do.  Two  of 
them  are  down  with  the  venereal  disease,  Die  and  Sary.  Doc- 
tor Jenkins  has  been  attending  Die  four  weeks,  and  very  lit- 
tle alteration  as  I  can  learn.  It  is  very  hard  to  get  the  truth ;  but 
from  what  I  can  learn,  Sary  got  it  from  Friday."  A  note  ap- 
pended to  this  letter,  presumably  by  Telfair,  reads :  "Friday  is 
the  house  servant  sent  to  Retreat  every  summer.  I  have  all  the 
servants  examined  before  they  leave  Savannah." 

In  a  letter  of  February,  183 1,  Cain  described  his  winter  work 
and  his  summer  plans.  The  teams  had  hauled  away  nearly  all 
the  cotton  crop  of  205  bales;  the  hog  killing  had  yielded  thirteen 
thousand  pounds  of  pork,  from  which  some  of  the  bacon  and 
lard  was  to  be  sent  to  Telfair's  town  house ;  the  cotton  seed  were 
abundant  and  easily  handled,  but  they  were  thought  good  for 
fertilizing  corn  only;  the  stable  and  cowpen  manure  was  embar- 
rassingly plentiful  in  view  of  the  pressure  of  work  for  the  mules 
and  oxen;  and  the  encumbrance  of  logs  and  brush  on  the  fields 
intended  for  cotton  was  straining  all  the  labor  available  to  clear 
them.  The  sheep,  he  continued,  had  not  had  many  lambs ;  and 
many  of  the  pigs  had  died  in  spite  of  care  and  feeding;  but  "the 
negroes  have  been  healthy,  only  colds,  and  they  have  for  some 
time  now  done  their  work  in  as  much  peace  and  have  been  as 
obedient  as  I  could  wish." 

One  of  the  women,  however,  Darkey  by  name,  shortly  became 
a  pestilent  source  of  trouble.  Cain  wrote  in  1833  that  her  terma- 
gant outbreaks  among  her  fellows  had  led  him  to  apply  a  "mod- 
erate correction,"  whereupon  she  had  further  terrorized  her 
housemates  by  threats  of  poison.  Cain  could  then  only  unbosom 
himself  to  Telfair :  "I  will  give  you  a  full  history  of  my  belief 
of  Darkey,  to  wit:  I  believe  her  disposition  as  to  temper  is  as 
bad  as  any  in  the  whole  world.  I  believe  she  is  as  unfaithful  as 
any  I  have  ever  been  acquainted  with.  In  every  respect  I  be- 
lieve she  has  been  more  injury  to  you  in  the  place  where  she  is 


236  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

than  two  such  negroes  would  sell  for.  ...  I  have  tryed  and 
done  all  I  could  to  get  on  with  her,  hopeing  that  she  would  mend ; 
but  I  have  been  disappointed  in  every  instant.  I  can  not  hope 
for  the  better  any  longer." 

The  factor's  record  becomes  available  from  1834,  with  the 
death  of  Telfair.  The  seventy-six  pair  of  shoes  entered  that 
year  tells  roughly  the  number  of  working  hands,  and  the  ninety- 
six  pair  in  1842  suggests  the  rate  of  increase.  Meanwhile  the 
cotton  output  rose  from  166  bales  of  about  three  hundred  pounds 
in  1834  to  407  bales  of  four  hundred  pounds  in  the  fine  weather 
of  1 84 1.  In  1836  an  autumn  report  from  Cain  is  available,  dated 
November  20.  Sickness  among  the  negroes  for  six  weeks  past 
had  kept  eight  or  ten  of  them  in  their  beds ;  the  resort  to  Petit 
Gulf  seed  had  substantially  increased  the  cotton  yield;  and  the 
fields  were  now  white  with  a  crop  in  danger  of  ruin  from  storms. 
"My  hands."  he  said,  "have  picked  well  when  they  were  able, 
and  some  of  them  appear  to  have  a  kind  of  pride  in  making  a 
good  crop."  A  gin  of  sixty  saws  newly  installed  had  proved  too 
heavy  for  the  old  driving  apparatus,  but  it  was  now  in  opera- 
tion with  shifts  of  four  mules  instead  of  two  as  formerly.  This 
pressure,  in  addition  to  the  hauling  of  cotton  to  market  had 
postponed  the  gathering  of  the  corn  crop.  The  corn  would  prove 
adequate  for  the  plantation's  need,  and  the  fodder  was  plentiful, 
but  the  oats  had  been  ruined  by  the  blast.  The  winter  cloth  sup- 
ply had  been  spun  and  woven,  as  usual,  on  the  place ;  but  Cain 
now  advised  that  the  cotton  warp  for  the  jeans  in  future  be 
bought.  "The  spinning  business  on  this  plantation,"  said  he, 
"is  very  ungaining.  In  the  present  arrangement  there  is  eight 
hands  regular  imployed  in  spinning  and  weaving,  four  of  which 
spin  warpe,  and  it  could  be  bought  at  the  factory  at  120  dollars 
annually.  Besides,  it  takes  400  pounds  of  cotton  each  year,  leave- 
ing  60  dollars  only  to  the  four  hands  who  spin  warp.  .  .  .  These 
hands  are  not  old  negroes,  not  all  of  them.  Two  of  Nanny's 
daughters,  or  three  I  may  say,  are  all  able  hands  .  .  .  and  these 
make  neither  corn  nor  meat.  Take  out  $20  to  pay  their  borde, 
and  it  leaves  them  in  debt.    I  give  them  their  task  to  spin,  and  they 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      237 

say  they  cannot  do  more.  That  is,  they  have  what  is  jenerly  given 
as  a  task." 

In  1840  Cain  raised  one  of  the  slaves  to  the  rank  of  driver, 
whereupon  several  of  the  men  ran  away  in  protest,  and  Cain  was 
impelled  to  defend  his  policy  in  a  letter  to  Mary  Telfair,  explain- 
ing that  the  new  functionary  had  not  been  appointed  "to  lay  off 
tasks  and  use  the  whip."  The  increase  of  the  laborers  and  the 
spread  of  the  fields,  he  said,  often  required  the  working  of  three 
squads,  the  plowmen,  the  grown  hoe  hands,  and  the  younger 
hoe  hands.  "These  separate  classes  are  frequently  separate  a 
considerable  distance  from  each  other,  and  so  soon  as  I  am  ab- 
sent from  either  they  are  subject  to  quarrel  and  fight,  or  to  idle 
time,  or  beat  and  abuse  the  mules;  and  when  called  to  account 
each  negro  present  when  the  misconduct  took  place  will  deny  all 
about  the  same.  I  therefore  thought,  and  yet  believe,  that  for 
the  good  order  of  the  plantation  and  faithful  performance  of 
their  duty,  it  was  proper  to  have  some  faithful  and  trusty  hand 
whose  duty  it  should  be  to  report  to  me  those  in  fault,  and  that 
is  the  only  dread  they  have  of  John,  for  they  know  he  is  not 
authorized  to  beat  them.  You  mention  in  your  letter  that  you 
do  not  wish  your  negroes  treated  with  severity.  I  have  ever 
thought  my  fault  on  the  side  of  lenity;  if  they  were  treated  se- 
vere as  many  are,  I  should  not  be  their  overseer  on  any  consid- 
eration." In  the  same  letter  Cain  mentioned  that  the  pork  made 
on  the  place  the  preceding  year  had  yielded  eleven  monthly  al- 
lowances to  the  negroes  at  the  rate  of  1050  pounds  per  month, 
and  that  the  deficit  for  the  twelfth  month  had  been  filled  as  usual 
by  a  shipment  from  Savannah. 

From  407  bales  in  1841  the  cotton  output  fell  rapidly,  perhaps 
because  of  restriction  prompted  by  the  low  prices,  to  198  bales  in 
1844.  Then  it  rose  to  the  maximum  of  438  bales  in  1848.  Soon 
afterwards  Cain's  long  service  ended,  and  after  two  years  dur- 
ing which  I.  Livingston  was  in  charge,  I.  N.  Bethea  was  engaged 
and  retained  for  the  rest  of  the  ante-bellum  period.  The  cotton 
crops  in  the  'fifties  did  not  commonly  exceed  three  hundred  bales 
of  a  weight  increasing  to  450  pounds,  but  they  were  supple- 
mented to  some  extent  by  the  production  of  wheat  and  rye  for 


238  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

market.  The  overseer's  wages  were  sometimes  as  low  as  $600, 
but  were  generally  $1000  a  year.  In  the  expense  accounts  'the 
annual  charges  for  shoes,  blankets  and  oznaburgs  were  no  more 
regular  than  the  items  of  "cotton  money  for  the  people."  These 
sums,  averaging  about  a  hundred  dollars  a  year,  were  distributed 
among  the  slaves  in  payment  for  the  little  crops  of  nankeen  cot- 
ton which  they  cultivated  in  spare  time  on  plots  assigned  to  the 
several  families.  Other  expense  items  mentioned  salt,  sugar, 
bacon,  molasses,  tobacco,  wool  and  cotton  cards,  loom  sleighs, 
mules  and  machinery.  Still  others  dealt  with  drugs  and  doc- 
tor's bills.  In  1837,  for  example,  Dr.  Jenkins  was  paid  $90  for 
attendance  on  Priscilla.  In  some  years  the  physician's  payment 
was  a  round  hundred  dollars,  indicating  services  on  contract. 
In  May,  1851,  there  are  debits  of  $16.16  for  a  constable's  reward, 
a  jail  fee  and  a  railroad  fare,  and  of  $1.30  for  the  purchase  of  a 
pair  of  handcuffs,  two  padlocks  and  a  trace  chain.  These  con- 
stitute the  financial  record  of  a  runaway's  recapture. 

From  1834  to  1841  the  gross  earnings  on  Retreat  ranged  be- 
tween eight  and  fifteen  thousand  dollars,  of  which  from  seven  to 
twelve  thousand  each  year  was  available  for  division  between 
the  owners.  The  gross  then  fell  rapidly  to  $4000  in  1844,  of 
which  more  than  half  was  consumed  in  expenses.  It  then  rose 
as  rapidly  to  its  maximum  of  $21,300  in  1847,  when  more  than 
half  of  it  again  was  devoted  to  current  expenses  and  betterments. 
Thereafter  the  range  of  the  gross  was  between  $8000  and  $17,- 
000  except  for  a  single  year  of  crop  failure,  1856,  when  the  109 
bales  brought  $5750.  During  the  'fifties  the  current  expenses 
ranged  usually  between  six  and  ten  thousand  dollars,  as  com- 
pared with  about  one  third  as  much  in  the  'thirties.  This  is  ex- 
plained partly  by  the  resolution  of  the  owners  to  improve  the 
fields,  now  grown  old,  and  to  increase  the  equipment.  For  the 
crop  of  1856,  for  example,  purchases  were  made  of  forty  tons 
of  Peruvian  guano  at  $56  per  ton,  and  nineteen  tons  of  Mexican 
guano  at  $25  a  ton.  In  the  following  years  lime,  salt  and  dried 
blood  were  included  in  the  fertilizer  purchases.  At  length  Hodg- 
son himself  gave  over  his  travels  and  his  ethnological  studies  to 
take  personal  charge  on  Retreat.     He  wrote  in  June,  1859,  to  his 


HI-  ^ 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      230 

friend  Senator  Hammond,  of  whom  we  have  seen  something  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  that  he  had  seriously  engaged  in  "high 
farming,"  and  was  spreading  huge  quantities  of  fertihzers.  He 
continued :  "My  portable  steam  engine  is  the  delicia  domini  and 
of  overseer  too.  It  follows  the  reapers  beautifully  in  a  field  of 
wheat,  130  acres,  and  then  in  the  rye  fields.  In  August  it  will 
be  backed  up  to  the  ^in  house  and  emancipate  from  slavery 
eighteen  mules  and  four  little  nigger  drivers."  ® 

The  factor's  books  for  this  plantation  continue  their  records 
into  the  war  time.  From  the  crop  of  1861  nothing  appears  to 
have  been  sold  but  a  single  bale  of  cotton,  and  the  year's  deficit 
was  $6,721.  The  proceeds  from  the  harvests  of  1862  were  $500 
from  nineteen  bales  of  cotton,  and  some  $10,000  from  fodder, 
hay,  peanuts  and  corn.  The  still  more  diversified  market  prod- 
uce of  1863  comprised  also  wheat,  which  was  impressed  by  the 
Confederate  government,  syrup,  cowpeas,  lard,  hams  and  vine- 
gar. The  proceeds  were  $17,000  and  the  expenses  about  $9000, 
including  the  overseer's  wages  at  $1300  and  the  purchase  of  350 
bushels  of  peanuts  from  the  slaves  at  $1.50  per  bushel.  The  reck- 
onings in  the  war  period  were  made  of  course  in  the  rapidly  de- 
preciating Confederate  currency.  The  stoppage  of  the  record 
in  1864  was  doubtless  a  consequence  of  Sherman's  march 
through  Georgia.^** 

In  the  western  cotton  belt  the  plantations  were  much  like  those 
of  the  eastern,  except  that  the  more  uniform  fertility  often  per- 
mitted the  fields  to  lie  in  solid  expanses  instead  of  being  sprawled 
and  broken  by  waste  lands  as  in  the  Piedmont.  The  scale  of  op- 
erations tended  accordingly  to  be  larger.  One  of  the  greatest 
proprietors  in  that  region,  unless  his  display  were  far  out  of  pro- 
portion to  his  wealth,  was  Joseph  A.  S.  Acklen  whose  group  of 
plantations  was  clustered  near  the  junction  of  the  Red  and  Mis- 
sissippi Rivers.  In  1859  ^^  began  to  build  a  country  house  on 
the  style  of  a  Gothic  castle,  with  a  great  central  hall  and  fifty 

•  MS.  among  the  Hammond  papers  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 

"  The  Retreat  records  are  in  the  possession  of  the  Georgia  Historical 
Society,  trustee  for  the  Telfair  Academy  of  Art,  Savannah,  Ga.  The  over- 
seer's letters  here  used  are  printed  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  314,  330- 
22^,  n,  39,  85. 


240  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

rooms  exclusive  of  baths  and  closets.^^  The  building  was  ex- 
pected to  cost  $150,000,  and  the  furnishings  $125,000  more. 
Acklen's  rules  for  the  conduct  of  his  plantations  will  be  discussed 
in  another  connection ;  ^^  but  no  description  of  his  estate  or  his 
actual  operations  is  available. 

Olmsted  described  in  detail  a  plantation  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Natchez.  Its  thirteen  or  fourteen  hundred  acres  of  cotton, 
corn  and  incidental  crops  were  tilled  by  a  plow  gang  of  thirty 
and  a  hoe  gang  of  thirty-seven,  furnished  by  a  total  of  135  slaves 
on  the  place.  A  driver  cracked  a  whip  among  the  hoe  hands, 
occasionally  playing  it  lightly  upon  the  shoulders  of  one  or  an- 
other whom  he  thought  would  be  stimulated  by  the  suggestion. 
"There  was  a  nursery  for  sucklings  at  the  quarters,  and  twenty 
women  at  this  time  left  their  work  four  times  a  day,  for  half  an 
hour,  to  nurse  the  young  ones,  and  whom  the  overseer  counted  as 
half  hands — that  is,  expected  to  do  half  an  ordinary  day's 
work."  At  half  past  nine  every  night  the  hoe  and  plow  fore- 
men, serving  alternately,  sounded  curfew  on  a  horn,  and  half  an 
hour  afterward  visited  each  cabin  to  see  that  the  households  were 
at  rest  and  the  fires  safely  banked.  The  food  allowance  was  a 
peck  of  corn  and  four  pounds  of  pork  weekly!  Each  family, 
furthermore,  had  its  garden,  fowl  house  and  pigsty;  every 
Christmas  the  master  distributed  among  them  cofifee,  molasses, 
tobacco,  calico  and  "Sunday  tricks"  to  the  value  of  from  a  thou- 
sand to  fifteen  hundred  dollars ;  and  every  man  might  rive  boards 
in  the  swamp  on  Sundays  to  buy  more  supplies,  or  hunt  and  fish 
in  leisure  times  to  vary  his  family's  fare.  Saturday  afternoon 
was  also  free  from  the  routine.  Occasionally  a  slave  would  run 
away,  but  he  was  retaken  sooner  or  later,  sometimes  by  the  aid 
of  dogs.     A  persistent  runaway  was  disposed  of  by  sale.^^ 

Another  estate  in  the  same  district,  which  Olmsted  observed 
more  cursorily,  comprised  four  adjoining  plantations,  each  with 
its  own  stables  and  quarter,  each  employing  more  than  a  hundred 
slaves  under  a  separate  overseer,  and  all  directed  by  a  steward 

^Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  Aug.  2,  1859. 
"Below,  pp.  262  ff. 

"F.  L.  Olmsted,  A  Journey  in  the  Back  Country  (New  York,  i860), 
pp.  46-54. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      241 

whom  the  traveler  described  as  cultured,  poetic  and  delight- 
ful. An  observation  that  women  were  at  some  of  the  plows 
prompted  Olmsted  to  remark  that  throughout  the  Southwest  the 
slaves  were  worked  harder  as  a  rule  than  in  the  easterly  and 
northerly  slaveholding  states.  On  the  other  hand  he  noted :  "In 
the  main  the  negroes  appeared  to  be  well  cared  for  and  abun- 
dantly supplied  with  the  necessaries  of  vigorous  physical  exist- 
ence. I A  large  part  of  them  lived  in  commodious  and  well  built 
cottages7  with  broad  galleries  in  front,  so  that  each  family  of 
five  had  two  rooms  on  the  lower  floor  and  a  large  loft.  J  The  re- 
mainder lived  in  log  huts,  small  and  mean  in  appearance ;  ^*  but 
those  of  their  overseers  were  little  better,  and  preparations  were 
being  made  to  replace  all  of  these  by  neat  boarded  cottages." 

IiTthe  sugar  district  Estwick  Evans  when  on  his  "pedestrious 
tour"  in  1817  found  the  shores  of  the  Mississippi  from  a  hun- 
dred miles  above  New  Orleans  to  twenty  miles  below  the  city  in 
a  high  state  of  cultivation.  "The  plantations  within  these  lim- 
its," he  said,  "are  superb  beyond  description.  .  .  .  The  dwelling 
houses  of  the  planters  are  not  inferior  to  any  in  the  United 
States,  either  with  respect  to  size,  architecture,  or  the  manner  in 
which  they  are  furnished.  The  gardens  and  yards  contiguous  to 
them  are  formed  and  decorated  with  much  taste.  The  cotton, 
sugar  and  ware  houses  are  very  large,  and  the  buildings  for  the 
slaves  are  well  finished.  The  latter  buildings  are  in  some  cases 
forty  or  fifty  in  number,  and  each  of  them  will  accommodate  ten 
or  twelve  persons.  .  .  .  The  planters  here  derive  immense  profits 
from  the  cultivation  of  their  estates.^^  The  yearly  income  from 
them  is  from  twenty  thousand  to  thirty  thousand  dollars." 

Gross  proceeds  running  into  the  tens  of  thousands  of  dollars 
were  indeed  fairly  common  then  and  afterward  among  Louisiana 
sugar  planters,  for  the  conditions  of  their  industry  conduced 
strongly  to  a  largeness  of  plantation  scale.  Had  railroad  facil- 
ities been  abundant  a  multitude  of  small  cultivators  might  have 
shipped  their  cane  to  central  mills  for  manufacture,  but  as  things 

"Olmsted,  Back  Country,  pp.  72-92. 

^  Estwick  Evans,  A  Pedestrious  Tour  .  .  .  through  the  Western  States 
and  Territories  (Concord,  N.  H.,  1817),  p.  219,  reprinted  in  R.  G.  Thwaites 
ed..  Early  Western  Travels,  VIII,  325,  326. 


242  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

were  the  weight  and  the  perishableness  of  the  cane  made  milling 
within  the  reach  of  easy  cartage  imperative.  It  was  inexpedient 
even  for  two  or  more  adjacent  estates  to  establish  a  joint  mill, 
for  the  imminence  of  frost  in  the  harvest  season  would  make 
wrangles  over  the  questions  of  precedence  in  the  grinding  almost 
inevitable.  As  a  rule,  therefore,  every  unit  in  cane  culture  was 
also  a  unit  in  sugar  manufacture.  Exceptions  were  confined  to 
the  scattering  instances  where  some  small  farm  lay  alongside  a 
plantation  which  had  a  mill  of  excess  capacity  available  for  cus- 
tom grinding  on  slack  days. 

The  type  of  plantation  organization  in  the  sugar  bowl  was 
much  like  that  which  has  been  previously  described  for  Jamaica. 
Mules  were  used  as  draught  animals  instead  of  oxen,  however, 
on  account  of  their  greater  strength  and  speed,  and  all  the  seed- 
ing and  most  of  the  cultivation  was  done  with  deep-running  plows. 
Steam  was  used  increasingly  as  years  passed  for  driving  the 
mills,  railways  were  laid  on  some  of  the  greater  estates  for  haul- 
ing the  cane,  more  suitable  varieties  of  cane  were  introduced, 
guano  was  imported  soon  after  its  discovery  to  make  the  rich 
fields  yet  more  fertile,  and  each  new  invention  of  improved  mill 
apparatus  was  readily  adopted  for  the  sake  of  reducing  expenses. 
In  consequence  the  acreage  cultivated  per  hand  came  to  be  sev- 
eral times  greater  than  that  which  had  prevailed  in  Jamaica's 
heyday.  But  the  brevity  of  the  growing  season  kept  the  sac- 
charine content  of  the  canes  below  that  in  the  tropics,  and  to- 
gether with  the  mounting  price  of  labor  made  prosperity  depend 
in  some  degree  upon  protective  tariffs.  The  dearth  of  land 
available  kept  the  sugar  output  well  below  the  domestic  demand, 
though  the  molasses  market  was  sometimes  glutted. 

A  typical  prosperous  estate  of  which  a  description  and  a  diary 
are  extant  ^®  was  that  owned  by  Valcour  Aime,  lying  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  Mississippi  about  sixty  miles  above  New  Orleans. 
Of  the  15,000  acres  which  it  comprised  in  1852,  800  were  in  cane, 
300  in  corn,  150  in  crops  belonging  to  the  slaves,  and  most  of  the 
rest  in  swampy  forest  from  which  two  or  three  thousand  cords 

^^  Harper's  Magazine,  VII,  758,  759  (November,  1853);  Valcour  Aime, 
Plantation  Diary  (New  Orleans,  1878),  partly  reprinted  in  Plantation  and 
Frontier,  I,  214,  230. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS  243 

of  wood  were  cut  each  year  as  fuel  for  the  sugar  mill  and  the 
boiling  house.  The  slaves  that  year  numbered  215  of  all  ages, 
half  of  them  field  hands,^^  and  the  mules  64,  The  negroes  were 
well  housed,  clothed  and  fed;  the  hospital  and  the  nursery  were 
capacious,  and  the  stables  likewise.  The  mill  was  driven  by  an 
eighty-horse-power  steam  engine,  and  the  vacuum  pans  and  the 
centrifugals  were  of  the  latest  types.  The  fields  were  elaborately 
ditched,  well  manured,  and  excellently  tended.  The  land  was  val- 
ued at  $360,000,  the  buildings  at  $100,000,  the  machinery  at  $60,- 
000,  the  slaves  at  $170,000,  and  the  Hvestock  at  $11,000;  total, 
$701,000.  The  crop  of  1852,  comprising  1,300,000  pounds  of 
white  centrifugal  sugar  at  6  cents  and  60,000  gallons  of  syrup  at 
36  cents,  yielded  a  gross  return  of  almost  $100,000.  The  ex- 
penses included  4,629  barrels  of  coal  from  up  the  river,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  outlay  for  wages  and  miscellaneous  supplies. 

In  the  routine  of  work,  each  January  was  devoted  mainly  to 
planting  fresh  canes  in  the  fields  from  which  the  stubble  canes  or 
second  rattoons  had  recently  been  harvested.  February  and 
March  gave  an  interval  for  cutting  cordwood,  cleaning  ditches, 
•and  such  other  incidentals  as  the  building  and  repair  of  the  plan- 
tation's railroad.  Warm  weather  then  brought  the  corn  plant- 
ing and  cane  and  corn  cultivation.  In  August  the  laying  by  of 
the  crops  gave  time  for  incidentals  again.  Corn  and  hay  were 
now  harvested,  the  roads  and  premises  put  in  order,  the  cord- 
wood  hauled  from  the  swamp,  the  coal  unladen  from  the  barges, 
and  all  things  made  ready  for  the  rush  of  the  grinding  season 
which  began  in  late  October.  In  the  first  phase  of  harvesting  the 
main  gang  cut  and  stripped  the  canes,  the  carters  and  the  rail- 
road crew  hauled  them  to  the  mill,  and  double  shifts  there  kept 
up  the  grinding  and  boiling  by  day  and  by  night.  As  long  as  the 
weather  continued  temperate  the  mill  set  the  pace  for  the  cutters. 
But  when  frost  grew  imminent  every  hand  who  could  wield  a 
knife  was  sent  to  the  fields  to  cut  the  still  standing  stalks  and  se- 

"  According  to  the  MS.  returns  of  the  U.  S.  census  of  1850  Aime's 
slaves  at  that  time  numbered  231,  of  whom  58  were  below  fifteen  years  old, 
164  were  between  15  and  65,  and  9  (one  of  them  blind,  another  insane) 
were  from  66  to  80  years  old.  Evidently  there  was  a  considerable  number 
of  slaves  of  working  age  not  classed  by  him  as  field  hands. 


244  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

cure  them  against  freezing.  For  the  first  few  days  of  this  phase, 
the  stalks  as  fast  as  cut  were  laid,  in  their  leaves,  in  great  mats 
with  the  tops  turned  south  to  prevent  the  entrance  of  north  winds, 
with  the  leaves  of  each  layer  covering  the  butts  of  that  below,  and 
with  a  blanket  of  earth  over  the  last  butts  in  the  mat.  Here  these 
canes  usually  stayed  until  January  when  they  were  stripped  and 
Strewn  in  the  furrows  of  the  newly  plowed  "stubble"  field  as 
the  seed  of  a  new  crop.  After  enough  seed  cane  were  "mat- 
layed,"  the  rest  of  the  cut  was  merely  laid  lengthwise  in  the  ad- 
jacent furrows  to  await  cartage  to  the  mill.^*  In  the  last  phase 
of  the  harvest,  which  followed  this  work  of  the  greatest  emer- 
gency, these  "windrowed"  canes  were  stripped  and  hauled,  with 
the  mill  setting  the  pace  again,  until  the  grinding  was  ended,  gen- 
erally in  December. 

Another  typical  sugar  estate  was  that  of  Dr.  John  P.  R.  Stone, 
comprising  the  two  neighboring  though  not  adjacent  plantations 
called  Evergreen  and  Residence,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Missis- 
sippi in  Iberville  Parish.  The  proprietor's  diary  is  much  like 
Aime's  as  regards  the  major  crop  routine  but  is  fuller  in  its  men- 
tion of  minor  operations.  These  included  the  mending  and 
heightening  of  the  levee  in  spring,  the  cutting  of 'staves,  the  shav- 
ing of  hoops  and  the  making  of  hogsheads  in  summer,  and,  in 
their  fitting  interims,  the  making  of  bricks,  the  sawing  of  lum- 
ber, enlarging  old  buildings,  erecting  new  ones,  whitewashing, 
ditching,  pulling  fodder,  cutting  hay,  and  planting  and  harvesting 
corn,  sweet  potatoes,  pumpkins,  peas  and  turnips.  There  is  oc- 
casional remark  upon  the  health  of  the  slaves,  usually  in  the  way 
of  rejoicing  at  its  excellence.  Apparently  no  outside  help  was 
employed  except  for  an  Irish  carpenter  during  the  construction 
of  a  sugar  house  on  Evergreen  in  1850.^^  The  slaves  on  Ever- 
green in  1850  numbered  44  between  the  ages  of  15  and  60  years 
and  26  children;  on  Residence,  25  between  15  and  65  years  and 

"  These  processes  of  matlaying  and  windrowing  are  described  in  L. 
Bouchereau,  Statement  of  the  Sugar  and  Rice  Crops  made  in  Louisiana  in 
1870-71   (New  Orleans,   1871),  p.  xii. 

"Diary  of  Dr.  J.  P.  R.  Stone.  MS.  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  John  Stone 
Ware,  White  Castle,  La.  For  the  privilege  of  using  the  diary  I  am  in- 
debted to  Mr.  V.  Alton  Moody  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  now  Lieu- 
tenant in  the  American  Expeditionary  Force  in  France. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS  245 

6  children,^"  The  joint  crop  in  1850,  ground  in  the  Residence 
mill,  amounted  to  312  hogsheads  of  brown  sugar  and  sold  for 
4^  to  5  cents  a  pound;  that  of  the  phenomenal  year  1853,  when 
the  Evergreen  mill  was  also  in  commission,  reached  520  hogs- 
heads on  that  plantation  and  179  on  Residence,  but  brought  only 
3  cents  a  pound.  These  prices  were  much  lower  than  those  of 
white  sugar  at  the  time ;  but  as  Valcour  Aime  found  occasion  to 
remark,  the  refining  reduced  the  weight  of  the  product  nearly  as 
much  as  it  heightened  the  price,  so  that  the  chief  advantage  of 
the  centrifugals  lay  in  the  speed  of  their  process. 

All  of  the  characteristic  work  in  the  sugar  plantation  routine 
called  mainly  for  able-bodied  laborers.  Children  were  less  used 
than  in  tobacco  and  cotton  production,  and  the  men  and  women, 
like  the  mules,  tended  to  be  of  sturdier  physique.  This  was  the 
result  partly  of  selection,  partly  of  the  vigorous  exertion  re- 
quired. 

Among  the  fourteen  hundred  and  odd  sugar  plantations  of 
this  period,  the  average  one  had  almost  a  hundred  slaves  of  all 
ages,  and  produced  average  crops  of  nearly  three  hundred  hogs- 
heads or  a  hundred  and  fifty  tons.  Most  of  the  Anglo-Americans 
among  the  planters  lived  about  Baton  Rouge  and  on  the  Red 
River,  where  they  or  their  fathers  had  settled  with  an  initial  pur- 
pose of  growing  cotton.  Their  fellows  who  acquired  estates  in 
the  Creole  parishes  were  perhaps  as  often  as  otherwise  men  who 
had  been  merchants  and  not  planters  in  earlier  life.  One  of 
these  had  removed  from  New  York  in  the  eighteenth  century  and 
had  thriven  in  miscellaneous  trade  at  Pensacola  and  on  the  Mis- 
sissippi. In  1821  he  bought  for  $140,000  a  plantation  and  its 
complement  of  slaves  on  Bayou  Lafourche,  and  he  afterward  ac- 
quired a  second  one  in  Plaquemines  Parish.  In  the  conduct  of 
his  plantation  business  he  shrewdly  bought  blankets  by  the  bale  in 
Philadelphia,  and  he  enlarged  his  gang  by  commissioning  agents 
to  buy  negroes  in  Virginia  and  Maryland.  The  nature  of  the 
instructions  he  gave  may  be  gathered  from  the  results,  for  there 
duly  arrived  in  several  parcels  between  1828  and  1832,  fully  cov- 

^  MS.  returns  in  the  U.  S.  Census  Bureau,  data  procured  through  the 
courtesy  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washington  and  Mr.  (now  Lieu- 
tenant)   V.  Alton  Moody. 


k 


246  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

ered  by  marine  insurance  for  the  coastwise  voyage,  fifty  slaves, 
male  and  female,  virtually  all  of  whom  ranged  between  the  ages 
of  ten  and  twenty-five  years. ^^  This  planter  prospered,  and  his 
children  after  him ;  and  while  he  may  have  had  a  rugged  nature, 
his  descendants  to-day  are  among  the  gentlest  of  Louisianians. . 
Another  was  Duncan  F.  Kenner,  who  was  long  a  slave  trader 
with  headquarters  at  New  Orleans  before  he  became  a  planter 
in  Ascension  Parish  on  a  rapidly  increasing  scale.  His  crop  ad- 
vanced from  580  hogsheads  in  1849  to  1,370  hogsheads  in  1853 
and  2,002  hogsheads  in  1858  when  he  was  operating  two  mills, 
one  equipped  with  vacuum  pans  and  the  other  with  Rillieux  ap- 
paratus.^^ A  third  example  was  John  Burnside,  who  emigrated 
from  the  North  of  Ireland  in  his  youth  rose  rapidly  from  groc- 
ery clerk  in  upland  Virginia  to  millionaire  merchant  in  New  Or- 
leans, and  then  in  the  fifties  turned  his  talents  to  sugar  grow- 
ing. He  bought  the  three  contiguous  plantations  of  Col.  J.  S. 
Preston  lying  opposite  Donaldsonville,  and  soon  added  a  fourth 
one  to  the  group.  In  1858  his  aggregate  crop  was  3,701  hogs- 
heads ;  and  in  1861  his  fields  were  described  by  William  H.  Rus- 
sell as  exhibiting  six  thousand  acres  of  cane  in  an  unbroken 
tract.  By  employing  squads  of  immigrant  Irishmen  for  ditching 
and  other  severe  work  he  kept  his  literally  precious  negroes,  well 
housed  and  fed,  in  fit  condition  for  efifective  routine  under  his 
well  selected  staff  of  overseers. ^^  Even  after  the  war  Burnside 
kept  on  acquiring  plantations,  and  with  free  negro  labor  kept  on 
making  large  sugar  crops.  At  the  end  of  his  long  life,  spent  fru- 
gally as  a  bachelor  and  somewhat  of  a  recluse,  he  was  doubtless 
by  far  the  richest  man  in  all  the  South.  The  number  of  planters 
who  had  been  merchants  and  the  frequency  of  partnerships  and 
corporations  operating  sugar  estates,  as  well  as  the  magnitude  of 
scale  characteristic  of  the  industry,  suggest  that  methods  of  a 
strictly  business  kind  were  more  common  in  sugar  production 

"  MSS.  in  private  possession,  data  from  which  were  made  available 
through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  V.  A.  Moody. 

"  The  yearly  product  of  each  sugar  plantation  in  Louisiana  between  1849 
and  1858  is  reported  in  P.  A.  Champonier's  Annual  Statement  of  the  crop. 
(New  Orleans,  1850-1859).  # 

"William  H.  Russell,  My  Diary  North  and  South  (Boston,  1863),  pp. 
268-270 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      247 

than  in  that  of  cotton  or  tobacco.  Domesticity  and  paternal- 
ism were  nevertheless  by  no  means  alien  to  the  sugar  regime. 

Virtually  all  of  the  tobacco,  short  staple  cotton  and  sugar  plan- 
tations were  conducted  on  the  gang  system.  The  task  system,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  instituted  on  the  rice  coast,  where  the  drain- 
age ditches  checkering  the  fields  into  half  or  quarter  acre  plots 
offered  convenient  units  of  performance  in  the  successive  proc- 
esses. The  chief  advantage  of  the  task  system  lay  in  the  ease 
with  which  it  permitted  a  planter  or  an  overseer  to  delegate  much 
of  his  routine  function  to  a  driver.  This  official  each  morning 
would  assign  to  each  field  hand  his  or  her  individual  plot,  and 
spend  the  rest  of  the  day  in  seeing  to  the  performance  of  the 
work.  At  evening  or  next  day  the  master  could  inspect  the  re- 
sults and  thereby  keep  a  check  upon  both  the  driver  and  the 
squad.  Each  slave  when  his  day's  task  was  completed  had  at  his 
own  disposal  such  time  as  might  remain.  The  driver  commonly 
gave  every  full  hand  an  equal  area  to  be  worked  in  the  same  way, 
and  discriminated  among  them  only  in  so  far  as  varying  condi- 
tions from  plot  to  plot  would  permit  the  assignment  of  the 
stronger  and  swifter  workmen  to  tracts  where  the  work  required 
was  greater,  and  the  others  to  plots  where  the  labor  was  less. 
Fractional  hands  were  given  fractional  tasks,  or  were  combined 
into  full  hands  for  full  tasks.  Thus  a  woman  rated  at  tnree 
quarters  might  be  helped  by  her  own  one  quarter  child,  or  two 
half-hand  youths  might  work  a  full  plot  jointly.  The  system 
gave  some  stimulus  to  speed  of  work,  at  least  from  time  to  time, 
by  its  promise  of  afternoon  leisure  in  reward.  But  for  this  pros- 
pect to  be  effective  the  tasks  had  to  be  so  limited  that  every  la- 
borer might  have  the  hope  of  an  hour  or  two's  release  as  the 
fruit  of  diligence.  The  performance  of  every  hand  tended  ac- 
cordingly to  be  standardized  at  the  customary  accomplishment  of 
the  weakest  and  slowest  members  of  the  group.  This  tendency, 
however,  was  almost  equally  strong  in  the  gang  system  also. 

The  task  acre  was  commonly  not  a  square  of  210  feet,  but  a 
rectangle  300  feet  long  and  150  feet  broad,  divided  into  square 
halves  and  rectangular  quarters,  and  further  divisible  into  "com- 
passes" five  feet  wide  and  150  feet  long,  making  one  sixtieth  of 


248  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

an  acre.  The  standard  tasks  for  full  hands  in  rice  culture  were 
scheduled  in  1843  as  follows :  plowing  with  two  oxen,  with 
the  animals  changed  at  noon,  one  acre;  breaking  stiff  land  with 
the  hoe  and  turning  the  stubble  under,  ten  compasses;  breaking 
such  land  with  the  stubble  burnt  off,  or  breaking  lighter  land,  a 
quarter  acre  or  slightly  more ;  mashing  the  clods  to  level  the  field, 
from  a  quarter  to  half  an  acre ;  trenching  the  drills,  if  on  well  pre- 
pared land,  three  quarters  of  an  acre ;  sowing  rice,  from  three  to 
four  half-acres ;  covering  the  drills,  three  quarters ;  the  first  hoe- 
ing, half  an  acre,  or  slightly  less  if  the  ground  were  lumpy  and 
the  drills  hard  to  clear;  second  hoeing,  half  an  acre,  or  slightly 
less  or  more  according  to  the  density  of  the  grass ;  third  hoeing 
with  hand  picking  of  the  grass  from  the  drills,  twenty  compasses ; 
fourth  hoeing,  half  an  acre ;  reaping  with  the  sickle,  three  quar- 
ters, or  much  less  if  the  ground  were  new  and  cumbered  or  if 
the  stalks  were  tangled ;  and  threshing  with  the  flail,  six  hundred 
sheaves  for  the  men,  five  hundred  for  the  women,"  Much  of 
the  incidental  work  was  also  done  by  tasks,  such  as  ditching,  cut- 
ting cordwood,  squaring  timber,  splitting  rails,  drawing  staves 
and  hoop  poles,  and  making  barrels.  The  scale  of  the  crop  was 
commonly  five  acres  of  rice  to  each  full  hand,  together  with  about 
half  as  much  in  provision  crops  for  home  consumption. 

Under  the  task  system,  Olmsted  wrote:  "most  of  the  slaves 
work  rapidly  and  well.  .  .  .  Custom  has  settled  the  extent  of  the 
task,  and  it  is  difficult  to  increase  it.  The  driver  who  marks  it 
out  has  to  remain  on  the  ground  until  it  is  finished,  and  has  no 
interest  in  over-measuring  it;  and  if  it  should  be  systematically 
increased  very  much  there  is  the  danger  of  a  general  stampede 
to  the  'swamp' — a  danger  a  slave  can  always  hold  before  his  mas- 
ter's cupidity.  ...  It  is  the  driver's  duty  to  make  the  tasked 
hands  do  their  work  well."  If  in  their  haste  to  finish  it  they 
neglect  to  do  it  properly  he  'sets  them  back,'  so  that  carelessness 
will  hinder  more  than  it  hastens  the  completion  of  their  tasks." 
But  Olmsted's  view  was  for  once  rose  colored.  A  planter  who 
lived  in  the  regime  wrote:     "The  whole  task  system  ...  is  one 

**  Edmund  Ruffin,  Agricultural  Survey  of  South  Carolina  (Columbia, 
1843),  p.  118. 

*•  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  pp.  435,  436. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      245 

that  I  most  unreservedly  disapprove  of,  because  it  promotes  idle- 
ness, and  that  is  the  parent  of  mischief."  ^'  Again  the  truth  lies 
in  the  middle  ground.  The  virtue  or  vice  of  the  system,  as  with 
the  gang  alternative,  depended  upon  its  use  by  a  diligent  master 
or  its  abuse  by  an  excessive  delegation  of  responsibility. 

That  the  tide  when  taken  at  the  flood  on  the  rice  coast  as  else- 
where would  lead  to  fortune  is  shown  by  the  career  of  the  great- 
est of  all  rice  planters,  Nathaniel  Heyward.  At  the  time  of  his 
birth,  in  1766,  his  father  was  a  planter  on  an  inland  swamp  near 
Port  Royal.  Nathaniel  himself  after  establishing  a  small  plan- 
tation in  his  early  manhood  married  Harriett  Manigault,  an 
heiress  with  some  fifty  thousand  dollars.  With  this,  when  both 
lands  and  slaves  were  cheap,  Heyward  bought  a  tide-land  tract 
and  erected  four  plantations  thereon,  and  soon  had  enough  ac- 
crued earnings  to  buy  the  several  inland  plantations  of  the  Gibbes 
brothers,  who  had  fallen  into  debt  from  luxurious  living.  With 
the  proceeds  of  his  large  crops  at  high  prices  during  the  great 
wars  in  Europe,  he  bought  more  slaves  year  after  year,  prefer- 
ably fresh  Africans  as  long  as  that  cheap  supply  remained  avail- 
able, and  he  bought  more  land  when  occasion  offered.  Joseph 
Manigault  wrote  of  him  in  1806:  "Mr.  Heyward  has  lately 
made  another  purchase  of  land,  consisting  of  300  acres  of  tide 
swamp,  joining  one  of  his  Combahee  plantations  and  belonging 
to  the  estate  of  Mrs.  Bell.  I  believe  he  has  made  a  good  bar- 
gain. It  is  uncleared  and  will  cost  him  not  quite  £20  per  acre. 
I  have  very  little  doubt  that  he  will  be  in  a  few  years,  if  he  lives, 
the  richest,  as  he  is  the  best  planter  in  the  state.  The  Cooper 
River  lands  give  him  many  a  long  ride."  Heyward  was  venture- 
some in  large  things,  conservative  in  small.  He  long  continued 
to  have  his  crops  threshed  by  hand,  saying  that  if  it  were  done 
by  machines  his  darkies  would  have  no  winter  work;  but  when 
eventually  he  instituted  mechanical  threshers,  no  one  could  dis- 
cern an  increase  of  leisure.  In  the  matter  of  pounding  mills 
likewise,  he  clung  for  many  years  to  those  driven  by  the  tides 
and  operating  slowly  and  crudely ;  but  at  length  he  built  two  new 
ones  driven  by  steam  and  so  novel  and  complete  in  their  ap- 

"J.  A.  Turner,  ed.,  Cotton  Planter's  Manual,  p.  34- 


250  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

paratus  as  to  be  the  marvels  of  the  countryside.  He  necessarily 
depended  much  upon  overseers ;  but  his  own  frequent  visits  of  in- 
spection and  the  assistance  rendered  by  his  sons  kept  the  scat- 
tered establishments  in  an  efficient  routine.  The  natural  increase 
of  his  slaves  was  reckoned  by  him  to  have  ranged  generally  be- 
tween one  and  five  per  cent  annually,  though  in  one  year  it  rose 
to  seven  per  cent.  At  his  death  in  1851  he  owned  fourteen  rice 
plantations  with  fields  ranging  from  seventy  to  six  hundred  acres 
in  each,  and  comprising  in  all  4,390  acres  in  cultivation.  He  had 
also  a  cotton  plantation,  much  pine  land  and  a  sawmill,  nine  resi- 
dences in  Charleston,  appraised  with  their  furniture  at  $180,- 
000;  securities  and  cash  to  the  amount  of  $200,000;  $20,000 
worth  of  horses,  mules  and  cattle;  $15,000  worth  of  plate;  and 
$3000  worth  of  old  wine.  His  slaves,  numbering  2,087  ^^^  ^P" 
praised  at  an  average  of  $550,  made  up  the  greater  part  of  his 
two  million  dollar  estate.  His  heirs  continued  his  policy.  In 
1855,  for  example,  they  bought  a  Savannah  River  plantation  called 
Fife,  containing  500  acres  of  prime  rice  land  at  $150  per  acre, 
together  with  its  equipment  and  120  slaves,  at  a  gross  price  of 
$135,600." 

The  history  of  the  estate  of  James  Heyward,  Nathaniel's 
brother,  was  in  striking  contrast  with  this.  When  on  a  tour  in 
Ireland  he  met  and  married  an  actress,  who  at  his  death  in  1796 
inherited  his  plantation  and  214  slaves.  Two  suitors  for  the 
widow's  hand  promptly  appeared  in  Alexander  Baring,  after- 
wards Lord  Ashburton,  and  Charles  Baring,  his  cousin.  Mrs. 
Heyward  married  the  latter,  who  increased  the  estate  to  seven 
or  eight  hundred  acres  in  rice,  yielding  crops  worth  from  twelve 
to  thirty  thousand  dollars.  But  instead  of  superintending  its 
work  in  person  Baring  bought  a  large  tract  in  the  North  Caro- 
lina mountains,  built  a  house  there,  and  carried  thither  some 
fifty  slaves  for  his  service.  After  squandering  the  income  for 
nearly  fifty  years,  he  sold  off  part  of  the  slaves  and  mortgaged 
the  land ;  and  when  the  plantation  was  finally  surrendered  in  set- 

^  MSS.  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Hawkins  K.  Jenkins,  PinopoHs,  S.  C, 
including  a  "Memoir  of  Nathaniel  Heyward,"  written  in  1895  by  Gabriel 
E.  Manigault. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      251 

tiement  of  Baring's  debts,  it  fell  into  Nathaniel  Heyward's  pos- 
session.^* 

Another  case  of  absentee  neglect,  made  notorious  through 
Fanny  Kemble's  Journal,  was  the  group  of  rice  and  sea-island 
cotton  plantations  founded  by  Senator  Pierce  Butler  on  and 
about  Butler's  Island  near  the  mouth  of  the  Altamaha  River. 
When  his  two  grandsons  inherited  the  estate,  they  used  it  as  a 
source  of  revenue  but  not  as  a  home.  One  of  these  was  Pierce 
Butler  the  younger,  who  lived  in  Philadelphia.  When  Fanny 
Kemble,  with  fame  preceding  her,  came  to  America  in  1832,  he 
became  infatuated,  followed  her  troupe  from  city  to  city,  and 
married  her  in  1834.  The  marriage  was  a  mistake.  The  slave- 
holder's wife  left  the  stage  for  the  time  being,  but  retained  a 
militant  English  abolitionism.  When  in  December,  1838,  she 
and  her  husband  were  about  to  go  South  for  a  winter  on  the 
plantations,  she  registered  her  horror  of  slavery  in  advance,  and 
resolved  to  keep  a  journal  of  her  experiences  and  observations. 
The  resulting  record  is  gloomy  enough.  The  swarms  of  ne- 
groes were  stupid  and  slovenly,  the  cabins  and  hospitals  filthy, 
the  women  overdriven,  the  overseer  callous,  the  master  indiffer- 
ent, and  the  new  mistress  herself,  repudiating  the  title,  was  more 
irritable  and  meddlesome  than  helpful.^°  The  short  sojourn 
was  long  enough.  A  few  years  afterward  the  ill-mated  pair 
were  divorced  and  Fanny  Kemble  resumed  her  own  name  and 
career.  Butler  did  not  mend  his  ways.  In  1859  his  half  of  the 
slaves,  429  in  number,  were  sold  at  auction  in  Savannah  to  pay 
his  debts.    . 

A  pleasanter  picture  is  afforded  by  the  largest  single  unit  in 
rice  culture  of  which  an  account  is  available.  This  was  the  plan- 
tation of  William  Aiken,  at  one  time  governor  of  South  Caro- 
lina, occupying  Jehossee  Island  near  the  mouth  of  the  Edisto 
River.  It  was  described  in  1850  by  Solon  Robinson,  an  Iowa 
farmer  then  on  tour  as  correspondent  for  the  American  Agri- 
culturist.    The  two  or  three  hundred  acres  of  firm  land  above 

**  Notes  by  Louis  Manigault  of  a  conversation  with  Nathaniel  Heyward 
in  1846.     MS.  in  the  collection  above  mentioned. 

"  Frances  Anne  Kemble,  Journal  of  a  Residence  on  a  Georgia  Plantation 
in  1838-1839  (London,  1863). 


252  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tide  comprised  the  homestead,  the  negro  quarter,  the  stables,  the 
stock  yard,  the  threshing  mill  and  part  of  the  provision  fields. 
Of  the  land  which  could  be  flooded  with  the  tide,  about  fifteen 
hundred  acres  were  diked  and  drained.  About  two-thirds  of 
this  appears  to  have  been  cropped  in  rice  each  year,  and  the  rest 
in  corn,  oats  and  sweet  potatoes.  The  steam-driven  threshing 
apparatus  was  described  as  highly  efficient.  The  sheaves  were 
brought  on  the  heads  of  the  negroes  from  the  great  smooth  stack 
yard,  and  opened  in  a  shed  where  the  scattered  grain  might  be 
saved.  A  mechanical  carrier  led  thence  to  the  threshing  ma- 
chines on  the  second  floor,  whence  the  grain  descended  through 
a  winnowing  fan.  The  pounding  mill,  driven  by  the  tide,  was 
a  half  mile  distant  at  the  wharf,  whence  a  schooner  belonging  to 
the  plantation  carried  the  hulled  and  polished  rice  in  thirty-ton 
cargoes  to  Charleston.  The  average  product  per  acre  was  about 
forty-five  bushels  in  the  husk,  each  bushel  yielding  some  thirty 
pounds  of  cleaned  rice,  worth  about  three  cents  a  pound.  The 
provision  fields  commonly  fed  the  force  of  slaves  and  mules ;  and 
the  slave  families  had  their  own  gardens  and  poultry  to  supple- 
ment their  fare.  The  rice  crops  generally  yielded  some  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  in  gross  proceeds,  while  the  expenses,  in- 
cluding the  two-thousand-dollar  salary  of  the  overseer,  com- 
monly amounted  to  some  ten  thousand  dollars.  During  the  sum- 
mer absence  of  the  master,  the  overseer  was  the  only  white  man 
on  the  place.  The  engineers,  smiths,  carpenters  and  sailors  were 
all  black.  "The  number  of  negroes  upon  the  place,"  wrote  Rob- 
inson, "is  just  about  700,  occupying  84  double  frame  houses,  each 
containing  two  tenements  of  three  rooms  to  a  family  besides  the 
cockloft.  .  .  .  There  are  two  common  hospitals  and  a  'lying-in 
hospital,'  and  a  very  neat,  commodious  church,  which  is  well 
filled  every  Sabbath.  .  .  .  Now  the  owner  of  all  this  property 
lives  in  a  very  humble  cottage,  embowered  in  dense  shrubbery 
and  making  no  show.  .  .  .  He  and  his  family  are  as  plain  and 
unostentatious  in  their  manners  as  the  house  they  live  in.  ,  .  . 
Nearly  all  the  land  has  been  reclaimed  and  the  buildings,  ex- 
cept the  house,  erected  new  within  the  twent)'^  years  that  Gover- 
nor Aiken  has  owned  the  island.     I  fully  believe  that  he  is  more 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      253 

concerned  to  make  his  people  comfortable  and  happy  than  he  is 
to  make  money."  ^°  When  the  present  writer  visited  Jehossee  in 
the  harvest  season  sixty  years  after  Robinson,  the  fields  were 
dotted  with  reapers,  wage  earners  now  instead  of  slaves,  but  still 
using  sickles  on  half-acre  tasks ;  and  the  stack  yard  was  aswarm 
with  sable  men  and  women  carrying  sheaves  on  their  heads  and 
chattering  as  of  old  in  a  dialect  which  a  stranger  can  hardly  un- 
derstand. The  ante-bellum  hospital  and  many  of  the  cabins  in 
their  far-thrown  quadruple  row  were  still  standing.  The  site  of  the 
residence,  however,  was  marked  only  by  desolate  chimneys,  a  live- 
oak  grove  and  a  detached  billiard  room,  once  elegant  but  now 
ruinous,  the  one  indulgence  which  this  planter  permitted  himself. 
The  ubiquitous  Olmsted  chose  for  description  two  rice  planta- 
tions operated  as  one,  which  he  inspected  in  company  with  the 
owner,  whom  he  calls  "Mr.  X."  Frame  cabins  at  intervals  of 
three  hundred  feet  constituted  the  quarters;  the  exteriors  were 
whitewashed,  the  interiors  lathed  and  plastered,  and  each  family 
had  three  rooms  and  a  loft,  as  well  as  a  chicken  yard  and  pigsty 
not  far  away.  "Inside,  the  cabins  appeared  dirty  and  disor- 
dered, which  was  rather  a  pleasant  indication  that  their  home 
life  was  not  much  interfered  with,  though  I  found  certain  police 
regulations  enforced."  Olmsted  was  in  a  mellow  mood  that  day. 
At  the  nursery  "3.  number  of  girls  eight  or  ten  years  old  were 
occupied  in  holding  and  tending  the  youngest  infants.  Those  a 
little  older — the  crawlers — were  in  the  pen,  and  those  big  enough 
to  toddle  were  playing  on  the  steps  or  before  the  house.  Some 
of  these,  with  two  or  three  bigger  ones,  were  singing  and  danc- 
ing about  a  fire  they  had  made  on  the  ground.  .  .  .  The  nurse 
was  a  kind-looking  old  negro  woman.  ...  I  watched  for  half 
an  hour,  and  in  all  that  time  not  a  baby  of  them  began  to  cry; 
nor  have  I  ever  heard  one,  at  two  or  three  other  plantation  nur- 
series which  I  have  visited."  The  chief  slave  functionary  was 
a  "gentlemanly-mannered  mulatto  who  .  .  .  carried  by  a  strap 
at  his  waist  a  very  large  bunch  of  keys  and  had  charge  of  all  the 
stores  of  provisions,  tools  and  materials  on  the  plantations,  as 

'"^  American  Agriculturist,  IX,  187,  188,  reprinted  in  DeBow's  Review, 
IX,  201-203, 


254  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

well  as  of  their  produce  before  it  was  shipped  to  market.  He 
weighed  and  measured  out  all  the  rations  of  the  slaves  and  the 
cattle.  ...  In  all  these  departments  his  authority  was  superior 
to  that  of  the  overseer;  .  .  .  and  Mr.  X.  said  he  would  trust  him 
with  much  more  than  he  would  any  overseer  he  had  ever  known." 
The  master  explained  that  this  man  and  the  butler,  his  brother, 
having  been  reared  with  the  white  children,  had  received  special 
training  to  promote  their  sense  of  dignity  and  responsibility. 
The  brothers,  Olmsted  further  observed,  rode  their  own  horses 
the  following  Sunday  to  attend  the  same  church  as  their  master, 
and  one  of  them  slipped  a  coin  into  the  hand  of  the  boy  who  had 
been  holding  his  mount.  The  field  hands  worked  by  tasks  under 
their  drivers.  "I  saw  one  or  two  leaving  the  field  soon  after  one 
o'clock,  several  about  two;  and  between  three  and  four  I  met  a 
dozen  men  and  women  coming  home  to  their  cabins,  having  fin- 
ished their  day's  work,"  As  to  punishment,  Olmsted  asked  how 
often  it  was  necessary.  The  master  replied :  "  'Sometimes  per- 
haps not  once  for  two  or  three  weeks ;  then  it  will  seem  as  if  the 
devil  had  gotten  into  them  all  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  it.'  " 
As  to  matings :  "While  watching  the  negroes  in  the  field,  Mr. 
X.  addressed  a  girl  who  was  vigorously  plying  a  hoe  near  us : 
Ts  that  Lucy? — Ah,  Lucy,  what's  this  I  hear  about  you?'  The 
girl  simpered,  but  did  not  answer  or  discontinue  her  work. 
'What  is  this  I  hear  about  you  and  Sam,  eh?'  The  girl  grinned 
and  still  hoeing  away  with  all  her  might  whispered  'Yes,  sir.' 
'Sam  came  to  see  me  this  morning.'  'If  master  pleases.'  'Very 
well;  you  may  come  up  to  the  house  Saturday  night,  and  your 
mistress  will  have  something  for  you.'  "  ^^  We  may  hope  that 
the  pair  whose  prospective  marriage  was  thus  endorsed  with  the 
promise  of  a  bridal  gift  lived  happily  ever  after. 

The  most  detailed  record  of  rice  operations  available  is  that 
made  by  Charles  Manigault  from  the  time  of  his  purchase  in 
1833  of  "Cowrie,"  on  the  Savannah  River,  twelve  miles  above  the 
city  of  Savannah.^2     The  plantation  then  had  220  acres  in  rice 

*^  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  418-448. 

''The  Manigault  MSS.  are  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  H.  K.  Jenkins, 
Pinopolis,  S.  C.  Selections  from  them  are  printed  in  Plantation  and  Fron- 
tier, I,  134-139  ct  passim. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      255 

fields,  80  acres  unreclaimed,  a  good  pounding  mill,  and  50  slaves. 
The  price  of  $40,000  was  analyzed  by  Manigault  as  comprising 
$7500  for  the  mill,  $70  per  acre  for  the  cleared,  and  $37  for  the 
uncleared,  and  an  average  of  $300  for  the  slaves.  His  mainte- 
nance expense  per  hand  he  itemized  at  a  weekly  peck  of  corn, 
$13  a  year;  summer  and  winter  clothes,  $7;  shoes,  $1 ;  meat  at 
times,  salt,  molasses  and  medical  attention,  not  estimated.  In 
reward  for  good  service,  however,  Manigault  usually  issued 
broken  rice  worth  $2.50  per  bushel,  instead  of  corn  worth  $1. 
Including  the  overseer's  wages  the  current  expense  for  the  plan- 
tation for  the  first  six  years  averaged  about  $2000  annually. 
Meanwhile  the  output  increased  from  200  barrels  of  rice  in  1833 
to  578  in  1838.  The  crop  in  the  latter  year  was  particularly 
notable,  both  in  its  yield  of  three  barrels  per  acre,  or  163^  barrels 
per  working  hand,  and  its  price  of  four  cents  per  pound  or  $24 
per  barrel.  The  net  proceeds  of  the  one  crop  covered  the  pur- 
chase in  1839  of  two  families  of  slaves,  comprising  sixteen  per- 
sons, mostly  in  or  approaching  their  prime,  at  a  price  of  $640 
each. 

Manigault  and  his  family  were  generally  absent  every  summer 
and  sometimes  in  winter,  at  Charleston  or  in  Europe,  and  once 
as  far  away  as  China.  His  methods  of  administration  may  be 
gathered  from  his  letters,  contracts  and  memoranda.  In  Janu- 
ary, 1848,  he  wrote  from  Naples  to  I.  F.  Cooper  whom  his  fac- 
tor had  employed  at  $250  a  year  as  a  new  overseer  on  Cowrie: 
"My  negroes  have  the  reputation  of  being  orderly  and  well  dis- 
posed ;  but  like  all  negroes  they  are  up  to  anything  if  not  watched 
and  attended  to.  I  expect  the  kindest  treatment  of  them  from 
you,  for  this  has  always  been  a  principal  thing  with  me.  I  never 
suffer  them  to  work  off  the  place,  or  exchange  work  with  any 
plantation.  ...  It  has  always  been  my  plan  to  give  out  allow- 
ance to  my  negroes  on  Sunday  in  preference  to  any  other  day, 
because  this  has  much  influence  in  keeping  them  at  home  that 
day,  whereas  if  they  received  allowance  on  Saturday  for  in- 
stance some  of  them  would  be  off  with  it  that  same  evening  to 
the  shops  to  trade,  and  perhaps  would  not  get  back  until  Mon- 


256  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

day  morning.  I  allow  no  strange  negro  to  take  a  wife  on  my 
place,  and  none  of  mine  to  keep  a  boat."  ^^ 

A  few  years  after  this,  Manigault  bought  an  adjoining  plan- 
tation, "East  Hermitage,"  and  consolidated  it  with  Gowrie,  thereby 
increasing  his  rice  fields  to  503  acres  and  his  slaves  to  about  90 
of  all  ages.  His  draught  animals  appear  to  have  comprised 
merely  five  or  six  mules.  A  new  overseer,  employed  in  1853  at 
wages  of  $500  together  with  corn  and  rice  for  his  table  and  the 
services  of  a  cook  and  a  waiting  boy,  was  bound  by  a  contract 
stipulating  the  duties  described  in  the  letter  to  Cooper  above 
quoted,  along  with  a  few  additional  items.  He  was,  for  exam- 
ple, to  procure  a  book  of  medical  instructions  and  a  supply  of  the 
few  requisite  "plantation  medicines"  to  be  issued  to  the  nurses 
with  directions  as  needed.  In  case  of  serious  injury  to  a  slave, 
however,  the  sufferer  was  to  be  laid  upon  a  door  and  sent  by  the 
plantation  boat  to  Dr.  Bullock's  hospital  in  Savannah.  Except 
when  the  work  was  very  pressing  the  slaves  were  to  be  sent  home 
for  the  rest  of  the  day  upon  the  occurrence  of  heavy  rains  in  the 
afternoon,  for  Manigault  had  found  by  experience  "that  always 
after  a  complete  wetting,  particularly  in  cold  rainy  weather  in 
winter  or  spring,  one  or  more  of  them  are  made  sick  and  lie  up, 
and  at  times  serious  illness  ensues,"  ^* 

In  1852  and  again  in  1854  storms  and  freshets  heavily  injured 
Manigault's  crops,  and  cholera  decimated  his  slaves.  In  1855 
the  fields  were  in  bad  condition  because  of  volunteer  rice,  and  the 
overseer  was  dying  of  consumption.  The  slaves,  however,  were 
in  excellent  health,  and  the  crop,  while  small,  brought  high  prices 
because  of  the  Crimean  war.  In  1856  a  new  overseer  named 
Venters  handled  the  flooding  inexpertly  and  made  but  half  a 
crop,  yielding  $12,660  in  gross  proceeds.  For  the  next  year 
Venters  was  retained,  on  the  maxim  "never  change  an  overseer 
if  you  can  help  it,"  and  nineteen  slaves  were  bought  for  $11,850 
to  fill  the  gaps  made  by  the  cholera.  Furthermore  a  tract  of  pine 
forest  was  bought  to  afford  summer  quarters  for  the  negro  chil- 
dren, who  did  not  thrive  on  the  malarial  plantation,  and  to  pro- 

"MS.  copy  in  Manigault  letter  book. 
** Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  122-126. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      257 

vide  a  place  of  isolation  for  cholera  cases.  In  1857  Venters 
made  a  somewhat  better  crop,  but  as  Manigault  learned  and 
wrote  at  the  end  of  the  year,  "elated  by  a  strong  and  very  false 
religious  feehng,  he  began  to  injure  the  plantation  a  vast  deal, 
placing  himself  on  a  par  with  the  negroes  by  even  joining  in  with 
them  at  their  prayer  meetings,  breaking  down  long  established 
discipline  which  in  every  case  is  so  difficult  to  preserve,  favor- 
ing and  siding  in  any  difficulty  with  the  people  against  the  driv- 
ers, besides  causing  numerous  grievances."  The  successor  of 
the  eccentric  Venters  in  his  turn  proved  grossly  neglectful ;  and  it 
was  not  until  the  spring  of  1859  that  a  reliable  overseer  was 
found  in  William  Capers,  at  a  salary  of  $1000.  Even  then  the 
year's  experience  was  such  that  at  its  end  Manigault  recorded  the 
sage  conclusion:  "The  truth  is,  on  a  plantation,  to  attend  to 
things  properly  it  requires  both  master  and  overseer." 

The  affairs  of  another  estate  in  the  Savannah  neighborhood, 
"Sabine  Fields,"  belonging  to  the  Alexander  Telfair  estate, 
may  be  gleaned  from  its  income  and  expense  accounts.  The 
purchases  of  shoes  indicate  a  working  force  of  about  thirty 
hands.  The  purchases  of  woolen  clothing  and  waterproof  hats 
tell  of  adequate  provision  against  inclement  weather;  but  the 
scale  of  the  doctor's  bills  suggest  either  epidemics  or  serious 
occasional  illnesses.  The  crops  from  1845  to  1854  ranged  be- 
tween seventeen  and  eighty  barrels  of  rice ;  and  for  the  three  re- 
maining years  of  the  record  they  included  both  rice  and  sea-is- 
land cotton.  The  gross  receipts  were  highest  at  $1,695  in  1847 
and  lowest  at  $362  in  1851;  the  net  varied  from  a  surplus  of 
$995  in  1848  to  a  deficit  of  $2,035  in  the  two  years  1853  and  1854 
for  which  the  accounting  was  consolidated.  Under  E.  S.  Mell, 
who  was  overseer  until  1854  at  a  salary  of  $350  or  less,  there 
were  profits  until  1849,  losses  thereafter.  The  following  items 
of  expense  in  this  latter  period,  along  with  high  doctor's  bills, 
may  explain  the  reverse :  for  taking  a  negro  from  the  guard- 
house, $5 ;  for  court  costs  in  the  case  of  a  boy  prosecuted  for  lar- 
ceny, $9.26;  jail  fees  of  Cesar,  $2.69;  for  the  apprehension  of  a 
runaway,  $5 ;  paid  Jones  for  trying  to  capture  a  negro,  $5.  In 
February,  1854,  Mell  was  paid  off,  and  a  voucher  made  record 


258  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

of  a  newspaper  advertisement  for  another  overseer.  What  hap- 
pened to  the  new  incumbent  is  told  by  the  expense  entries  of 
March  9,  1855 :  "Paid  .  .  .  amount  Jones'  bill  for  capturing 
negroes,  $25.  Expenses  of  Overseer  Page's  burial  as  follows, 
Ferguson's  bill,  $25;  Coroner's,  $14;  Dr.  Kollock's,  $5;  total- 
$69."  A  further  item  in  1856  of  twenty-five  dollars  paid  for  the 
arrest  of  Bing  and  Tony  may  mean  that  two  of  the  slaves  who 
shared  in  the  kilHng  of  the  overseer  succeeded  for  a  year  in 
eluding  capture,  or  it  may  mean  that  disorders  continued"  under 
Page's  successor.^^ 

Other  lowland  plantations  on  a  scale  similar  to  that  of  Sabine 
Fields  showed  much  better  earnings.  One  of  these,  in  Liberty 
County,  Georgia,  belonged  to  the  heirs  of  Dr.  Adam  Alexander  of 
Savannah.  It  was  devoted  to  sea-island  cotton  in  the  'thirties, 
but  rice  was  added  in  the  next  decade.  While  the  output  fluctu- 
ated, of  course,  the  earnings  always  exceeded  the  expenses  and 
sometimes  yielded  as  much  as  a  hundred  dollars  per  hand  for 
distribution  among  the  owners.^^ 

The  system  of  rice  production  was  such  that  plantations  with 
less  than  a  hundred  acres  available  for  the  staple  could  hardly 
survive  in  the  competition.  If  one  of  these  adjoined  another  es- 
tate it  was  likely  to  be  merged  therewith ;  but  if  it  lay  in  isolation 
the  course  of  years  would  probably  bring  its  abandonment.  The 
absence  of  the  proprietors  every  summer  in  avoidance  of  ma- 
laria, and  the  consequent  expense  of  overseer's  wages,  hampered 
operations  on  a  small  scale,  as  did  also  the  maintenance  of  spe- 
cial functionaries  among  the  slaves,  such  as  drivers,  boatswains, 
trunk  minders,  bird  minders,  millers  and  coopers.  In  i860  Louis 
Manigault  Hsted  the  forty-one  rice  plantations  on  the  Savannah 
River  and  scheduled  their  acreage  in  the  crop.  Only  one  of  them 
had  as  little  as  one  hundred  acres  in  rice,  and  it  seems  to  have 
been  an  appendage  of  a  larger  one  across  the  river.  On  the 
other  hand,  two  of  them  had  crops  of  eleven  hundred,  and  two 
more  of  twelve  hundred  acres  each.     The  average  was  about  425 

"  Account  book  of  Sabine  Fields  plantation,  among  the  Telfair  MSS.  in 
the  custody  of  the  Georgia  Historical  Society,  Savannah,  Ga. 

**  The  accounts  for  selected  years  are  printed  in  Plantation  and  Frontier, 
I,  150-165. 


TYPES  OF  LARGE  PLANTATIONS      259 

acres  per  plantation,  expected  to  yield  about  1200  pounds  of  rice 
per  acre  each  year.^^  A  census  tabulation  in  1850,  ignoring  any 
smaller  units,  numbered  the  plantations  which  produced  annually 
upwards  of  20,000  pounds  of  rice  at  446  in  South  Carolina,  80 
in  Georgia,  and  25  in  North  Carolina.^^ 

Indigo  and  sea-island  cotton  fields  had  no  ditches  dividing  them 
permanently  into  task  units ;  but  the  fact  that  each  of  these  in  its 
day  was  often  combined  with  rice  on  the  same  plantations,  and 
that  the  separate  estates  devoted  to  them  respectively  lay  in  the 
region  dominated  by  the  rice  regime,  led  to  the  prevalence  of  the 
task  system  in  their  culture  also.  The  soils  used  for  these  crops 
were  so  sandy  and  light,  however,  that  the  tasks,  staked  off  each 
day  by  the  drivers,  ranged  larger  than  those  in  rice.  In  the  cot- 
ton fields  they  were  about  half  an  acre  per  hand,  whether  for 
listing,  bedding  or  cultivation.  In  the  collecting  and  spreading 
of  swamp  mud  and  other  manures  for  the  cotton  the  work  was 
probably  done  mostly  by  gangs  rather  than  by  task,  since  the  units 
were  hard  to  measure.  In  cotton  picking,  likewise,  the  condi- 
tions of  the  crop  were  so  variable  and  the  need  of  haste  so  great 
that  time  work,  perhaps  with  special  rewards  for  unusually  heavy 
pickings,  was  the  common  resort.  Thus  the  lowland  cotton 
regime  alternated  the  task  and  gang  systems  according  to  the 
work  at  hand ;  and  even  the  rice  planters  of  course  abandoned  all 
thoughts  of  stinted  performance  when  emergency  pressed,  as  in 
the  mending  of  breaks  in  the  dikes,  or  when  joint  exertion  was 
required,  as  in  log  rolling,  or  when  threshing  and  pounding  with 
machinery  to  set  the  pace. 

That  the  task  system  was  extended  sporadically  into  the  South 
Carolina  Piedmont,  is  indicated  by  a  letter  of  a  certain  Thomas 
Parker  of  the  Abbeville  district,  in  1831,^^  which  not  only  de- 
scribed his  methods  but  embodied  an  essential  plantation  precept. 
He  customarily  tasked  his  hoe  hands,  he  said,  at  rates  determined 
by  careful  observation  as  just  both  to  himself  and  the  workers. 
These  varied  according  to  conditions,  but  ranged  usually  about 

"  MS.  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  H.  K.  Jenkins,  Pinopolis,  S.  C. 
^Compendium  of  the  Seventh  U.  S.  Census,  p.  178. 
^Southern    Agriculturist,    March,    1831,    reprinted    in    the    American 
Farmer,  XIII,  105,  io€. 


26o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

three  quarters  of  an  acre.  He  continued :  "I  plant  six  acres  of 
cotton  to  the  hand,  which  is  about  the  usual  quantity  planted  in 
my  neighborhood.  I  do  not  make  as  large  crops  as  some  of  my 
neighbors.  I  am  content  with  three  to  three  and  a  half  bales  of 
cotton  to  the  hand,  with  my  provisions  and  pork ;  but  some  few 
make  four  bales,  and  last  year  two  of  my  neighbors  made  five 
bales  to  the  hand.  In  such  cases  I  have  vanity  enough,  however, 
to  attribute  this  to  better  lands.  I  have  no  overseer,  nor  indeed 
is  there  one  in  the  neighborhood.  We  personally  attend  to  our 
planting,  believing  that  as  good  a  manure  as  any,  if  not  the  best 
we  can  apply  to  our  fields,  is  the  print  of  the  master's  footstep." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT 

TYPICAL  planters  though  facile  in  conversation  seldom  re- 
sorted to  their  pens.  Few  of  them  put  their  standards 
into  writing  except  in  the  form  of  instructions  to  their 
stewards  and  overseers.  These  counsels  of  perfection,  drafted 
in  widely  separated  periods  and  localities,  and  varying  much  in 
detail,  concurred  strikingly  in  their  main  provisions.  Their 
initial  topic  was  usually  the  care  of  the  slaves.  Richard  Corbin 
of  Virginia  wrote  in  1759  for  the  guidance  of  his  steward:  j"The 
care  of  negroes  is  the  first  thing  to  be  recommended,  that  you 
give  me  timely  notice  of  their  wants  that  they  may  be  provided 
with  all  necessarys.  The  breeding  wenches  more  particularly 
you  must  instruct  the  overseers  to  be  kind  and  indulgent  to,  and 
not  force  them  when  with  child  upon  any  service  or  hardship  that 
will  be  injurious  to  them,  .  .  .  and  the  children  to  be  well  looked 
after,  .  .  .  and  that  rione  of  them  suffer  in  time  of  sickness  for 
want  of  proper  care."!  P.  C.  Weston  of  South  Carolina  wrote  in 
1856:  "The  proprietor,  in  the  first  place,  wishes  the  overseer 
most  distinctly  to  understand  that  his  first  object  is  to  be,  under 
all  circumstances,  the  care  and  well  being  of  the  negroes.  The 
proprietor  is  always  ready  to  excuse  such  errors  as  may  proceed 
from  want  of  judgment;  but  he  never  can  or  will  excuse  any 
cruelty,  severity  or  want  of  care  towards  the  negroes.  For  the 
well  being,  however,  of  the  negroes  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to 
maintain  obedience,  order  and  discipline,  to  see  that  the  tasks  are 
punctually  and  carefully  performed,  and  to  conduct  the  busi- 
ness steadily  and  firmly,  without  weakness  on  the  one  hand  or 
harshness  on  the  other."  Charles  Manigault  likewise  required  of 
his  overseer  in  Georgia  a  pledge  to  treat  his  negroes  "all  with 
kindness  and  consideration  in  sickness  and  health."     On  J.  W. 

261 


'262  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Fowler's  plantation  in  the  Yazoo-Mississippi  delta  from  which 
we  have  seen  in  a  preceding  chapter  such  excellent  records  of 
cotton  picking,  the  preamble  to  the  rules  framed  in  1857  ran  as 
follows :  "The  health,  happiness,  good  discipline  and  obedience, 
good,  sufficient  and  comfortable  clothing,  a  sufficiency  of  good, 
wholesome  and  nutritious  food  for  both  man  and  beast  being  in- 
dispensably necessary  to  successful  planting,  as  well  as  for  rea- 
sonable dividends  for  the  amount  of  capital  invested,  without 
saying  anything  about  the  Master's  duty  to  his  dependents,  to 
himself,  and  his  God,  I  do  hereby  establish  the  following  rules 
and  regulations  for  the  management  of  my  Prairie  plantation, 
and  require  an  observance  of  the  same  by  any  and  all  overseers 
I  may  at  any  time  have  in  charge  thereof."  ^ 

Joseph  A.  S.  Acklen  had  his  own  rules  printed  in  1861  for  the 
information  of  applicants  and  the  guidance  of  those  who  were 
employed  as  his  overseers.^  His  estate  was  one  of  the  greatest 
in  Louisiana,  his  residence  one  of  the  most  pretentious,^  and  his 
rules  the  most  sharply  phrased.  They  read  in  part:  "Order 
and  system  must  be  the  aim  of  everyone  on  this  estate,  and  the 
maxim  strictly  pursued  of  a  time  for  everything  and  everything 
done  in  its  time,  a  place  for  everything  and  everything  kept  in 
its  place,  a  rule  for  everything  and  everything  done  according  to 
rule.  In  this  way  labor  becomes  easy  and  pleasant.  No  man 
can  enforce  a  system  of  discipline  unless  he  himself  conforms 
strictly  to  rules.  .  .  .  No  man  should  attempt  to  manage  negroes 
who  is  not  perfectly  firm  and  fearless  and  [in]  entire  control  of 
his  temper." 

James  H.  Hammond's  '■'plantation  manual"  which  is  the  full- 
est of  such  documents  available,  began  with  the  subject  of  the 
crop,  only  to  subordinate  it  at  once  to  the  care  of  the  slaves  and 
outfit :  "A  good  crop  means  one  that  is  good  taking  into  con- 
sideration everything,  negroes,  land,  mules,  stock,  fences,  ditches, 
farming  utensils,  etc.,  etc.,  all  of  which  must  be  kept  up  and 

*The  Corbin,  Weston,  Manigault  and  Fowler  instructions  are  printed 
in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  109-129. 

*  They  were  also  printed  in  DeBow's  Review,  XXII,  617-620,  XXIII, 
376-381   (Dec,  1856,  and  April,  1857). 

^See  above,  p.  239. 


PLANTJ.TION  MANAGEMENT  263 

improved  in  value.  The  effort  must  therefore  not  be  merely  to 
make  so  many  cotton  bales  or  such  an  amount  of  other  prod- 
uce, but  as  much  as  can  be  made  without  interrupting  the  steady 
increase  in  value  of  the  rest  of  the  property.  .  .  .  There  should 
be  an  increase  in  number  and  improvement  in  condition  of  ne- 
groes." * 

For  the  care  of  the  sick,  of  course,  all  these  planters  were  so- 
licitous. Acklen,  Manigault  and  Weston  provided  that  mild 
cases  be  prescribed  for  by  the  overseer  in  the  master's  absence, 
but  that  for  any  serious  illness  a  doctor  be  summoned.  One  of 
Telfair's  women  was  a  semi-professional  midwife  and  general 
practitioner,  permitted  by  her  master  to  serve  blacks  and  whites 
m  the  neighborhood.  For  home  needs  Telfair  wrote  of  her : 
"Elsey  is  the  doctoress  of  the  plantation.  In  case  of  extraor- 
dinary illness,  when  she  thinks  she  can  do  no  more  for  the  sick, 
you  will  employ  a  physician."  Hammond,  however,  was  such 
a  devotee  of  homeopathy  that  in  the  lack  of  an  available  physi- 
cian of  that  school  he  was  his  own  practitioner.  He  wrote  in 
his  manual:  "No  negro  will  be  allowed  to  remain  at  his  own 
house  when  sick,  but  must  be  confined  to  the  hospital.  Every 
reasonjtble  complaint  must  be  promptly  attended  to;  and  with 
any  marked  or  general  symptom  of  sickness,  however  trivial,  a 
negro  may  lie  up  a  day  or  so  at  least.  .  .  .  Each  case  has  to  be 
examined  carefully  by  the  master  or  overseer  to  ascertain  the 
disease.  The  remedies  next  are  to  be  chosen  with  the  utmost 
discrimination ;  .  .  .  the  directions  for  treatment,  diet,  etc.,  most 
implicitly  followed ;  the  effects  and  changes  cautiously  observed. 
...  In  cases  where  there  is  the  slightest  uncertainty,  the  books 
must  be  taken  to  the  bedside  and  a  careful  and  thorough  exam- 
ination of  the  case  and  comparison  of  remedies  made  before  ad- 
ministering them.  The  overseer  must  record  in  the  prescription 
book  every  dose  of  medicine  administered."  Weston  said  he 
would  never  grudge  a  doctor's  bill,  however  large ;  but  he  was 
anxious  to  prevent  idleness  under  pretence  of  illness.  "Noth- 
ing," said  he,  "is  so  subversive  of  discipline,  or  so  unjust,  as  to 

*  MS.  bound  volume,  "Plantation  Manual,"  among  the  Hammond  papers 
in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


264  AMERICAN  NEGRO  S'LAVERY 

allow  people  to  sham,  for  this  causes  the  well-disposed  to  do  the 
work  of  the  lazy." 

Pregnancy,  childbirth  and  the  care  of  children  were  matters 
of  special  concern.  Weston  wrote :  "The  pregnant  women  are 
always  to  do  some  work  up  to  the  time  of  their  confinement,  if  it 
is  only  walking  into  the  field  and  staying  there.  If  they  are 
sick,  they  are  to  go  to  the  hospital  and  stay  there  until  it  is  pretty 
certain  their  time  is  near.'  "Lying-in  women  are  to  be  attended 
by  the  midwife  as  long  as  is  necessary,  and  by  a  woman  put  to 
nurse  them  for  a  fortnight.  They  will  remain  at  the  negro 
houses  for  four  weeks,  and  then  will  work  two  weeks  on  the 
highland.  In  some  cases,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  allow  them 
to  lie  up  longer.  The  health  of  many  women  has  been  ruined 
by  want  of  care  in  this  particular."  Hammond's  rules  were  as 
follows :  "Sucklers  are  not  required  to  leave  their  homes  until 
sunrise,  when  they  leave  their  children  at  the  children's  house  be- 
fore going  to  field.  The  period  of  suckling  is  twelve  months. 
Their  work  lies  always  within  half  a  mile  of  the  quarter.  They 
are  required  to  be  cool  before  commencing  to  suckle — to  wait 
fifteen  minutes  at  least  in  summer,  after  reaching  the  children's 
house  before  nursing.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  nurse  to  see  that 
none  are  heated  when  nursing,  as  well  as  of  the  overseer  and  his 
wife  occasionally  to  do  so.  They  are  allowed  forty-five  min- 
utes at  each  nursing  to  be  with  their  children.  They  return 
three  times  a  day  until  their  children  are  eight  months  old — in 
the  middle  of  the  forenoon,  at  noon,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon ;  till  the  twelfth  month  but  twice  a  day,  missing  at 
noon;  during  the  twelfth  month  at  noon  only.  .  .  .  The  amount 
of  work  done  by  a  suckler  is  about  three  fifths  of  that  done  by 
a  full  hand,  a  little  increased  toward  the  last.  .  .  .  Pregnant 
women  at  five  months  are  put  in  the  sucklers'  gang.  No  plowing 
or  lifting  must  be  required  of  them.  Sucklers,  old,  infirm  and 
pregnant  receive  the  same  allowances  as  full-work  hands.  The 
regular  plantation  midwife  shall  attend  all  women  in  confine- 
ment. Some  other  woman  learning  the  art  is  usually  with  her 
during  delivery.  The  confined  woman  lies  up  one  month,  and 
the   midwife   remains   in   constant   attendance    for   seven   days. 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  265 

Each  woman  on  confinement  has  a  bundle  given  her  containing 
articles  of  clothing  for  the  infant,  pieces  of  cloth  and  rag,  and 
some  nourishment,  as  sugar,  coffee,  rice  and  flour  for  the 
mother." 

The  instructions  with  one  accord  required  that  the  rations  is- 
sued to  the  negroes  be  never  skimped.  Corbin  wrote,  "They 
ought  to  have  their  belly  full,  but  care  must  be  taken  with  this 
plenty  that  no  waste  is  committed."  Acklen,  closely  followed  by 
Fowler,  ordered  his  overseer  to  ''see  that  their  necessities  be  sup- 
plied, that  their  food  and  clothing  be  good  and  sufficient,  their 
houses  comfortable ;  and  be  kind  and  attentive  to  them  in  sick- 
ness and  old  age."  And  further :  "There  will  be  stated  hours 
for  the  negroes  to  breakfast  and  dine  [in  the  field],  and  those 
hours  must  be  regularly  observed.  The  manager  will  frequently 
inspect  the  meals  as  they  are  brought  by  the  cook — see  that  they 
have  been  properly  prepared,  and  that  vegetables  be  at  all  times 
served  with  the  meat  and  bread."  At  the  same  time  he  forbade 
his  slaves  to  use  ardent  spirits  or  to  have  such  about  their  houses. 
Weston  wrote :  "Great  care  should  be  taken  that  the  negroes 
should  never  have  less  than  their  regular  allowance.  In  all  cases 
of  doubt,  it  should  be  given  in  favor  of  the  largest  quantity. 
The  measure  should  not  be  struck,  but  rather  heaped  up  over. 
None  but  provisions  of  the  best  quality  should  be  used."  Tel- 
fair specified  as  follows :  "The  allowance  for  every  grown  ne- 
gro, however  old  and  good  for  nothing,  and  every  young  one 
that  works  in  the  field,  is  a  peck  of  corn  each  week  and  a  pint  of 
salt,  and  a  piece  of  meat,  not  exceeding  fourteen  pounds,  per 
month.  .  .  .  The  suckling  children,  and  all  other  small  ones  who 
do  not  work  in  the  field,  draw  a  half  allowance  of  corn  and  salt. 
....  Feed  everything  plentifully,  but  waste  nothing."  He 
added  that  beeves  were  to  be  killed  for  the  negroes  in  July,  August 
and  September.  Hammond's  allowance  to  each  working  hand 
was  a  heaping  peck  of  meal  and  three  pounds  of  bacon  or 
pickled  pork  every  week.  In  the  winter,  sweet  potatoes  were 
issued  when  preferred,  at  the  rate  of  a  bushel  of  them  in  lieu 
^of  the  peck  of  meal;  and  fresh  beef,  mutton  or  pork,  at  increased 
weights,  were  to  be  substituted  for  the  salt  pork  from  time  to 


266  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

time.  The  ditchers  and  drivers  were  to  have  extra  allowances 
in  meat  and  molasses.  Furthermore,  "Each  ditcher  receives 
every  night,  when  ditching,  a  dram  (jigger)  consisting  of  two- 
thirds  whiskey  and  one-third  water,  with  as  much  asafoetida 
as  it  will  absorb,  and  several  strings  of  red  peppers  added  in 
the  barrel.  The  dram  is  a  large  wine-glass  full.  In  cotton 
picking  time  when  sickness  begins  to  be  prevalent,  every  field 
hand  gets  a  dram  in  the  morning  before  leaving  for  the  field. 
After  a  soaking  rain  all  exposed  to  it  get  a  dram  before  changing 
their  clothes;  also  those  exposed  to  the  dust  from  the  sheller 
and  fan  in  corn  shelling,  on  reaching  the  quarter  at  night;  or 
anyone  at  any  time  required  to  keep  watch  in  the  night.  Drams 
are  not  given  as  rewards,  but  only  as  medicinal.  From  the 
second  hoeing,  or  early  in  May,  every  work  hand  who  uses  it 
gets  an  occasional  allowance  of  tobacco,  about  one  sixth  of  a 
pound,  usually  after  some  general  operation,  as  a  hoeing,  plow- 
ing, etc.  This  is  continued  until  their  crops  are  gathered,  when 
they  can  provide  for  themselves."  The  families,  furthermore, 
shared  in  the  distribution  of  the  plantation's  peanut  crop  every 
fall,  f;  Each  child  was  allowed  one  third  as  much  meal  and  meat 
as  was  given  to  each  field  hand,  and  an  abundance  of  vegetables 
to  be  cooked  with  their  meat.  The  cooking  and  feeding  was 
to  be  done  at  the  day  nursery.  For  breakfast  they  were  to 
have  hominy  and  milk  and  cold  corn  bread;  for  dinner,  vege- 
table soup  and  dumplings  or  bread;  and  cold  bread  or  potatoes 
were  to  be  kept  on  hand  for  demands  between  meals^  They  were 
also  to  have  molasses  once  or  twice  a  week.  Each  child  was 
provided  with  a  pan  and  spoon  in  charge  of  the  nurse. 

Hammond's  clothing  allowance  was  for  each  man  in  the 
fall  two  cotton  shirts,  a  pair  of  woolen  pants  and  a  woolen 
jacket,  and  in  the  spring  two  cotton  shirts  and  two  pairs  of 
cotton  pants,  with  privilege  of  substitution  when  desired ;  for 
each  woman  six  yards  of  woolen  cloth  and  six  yards  of  cotton 
cloth  in  the  fall,  six  yards  of  light  and  six  of  heavy  cotton  cloth 
in  the  spring,  with  needles,  thread  and  buttons  on  each  occasion. 
Each  worker  was  to  have  a  pair  of  stout  shoes  in  the  fall,  and 
a  heavy  blanket  every  third  year.     Children's  cloth  allowances 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  267 

were  proportionate  and  their  mothers  were  required  to  dress 
them  in  clean  clothes  twice  a  week. 

In  the  matter  of  sanitation,  Acklen  directed  the  overseer  to 
see  that  the  negroes  kept  clean  in  person,  to  inspect  their  houses 
at  least  once  a  week  and  especially  during  the  summer,  to 
examine  their  bedding  and  see  to  its  being  well  aired,  to  require 
that  their  clothes  be  mended,  "and  everything  attended  to  which 
conduces  to  their  comfort  and  happiness."  In  these  regards, 
as  in  various  others.  Fowler  incorporated  Acklen's  rules  in 
his  own,  almost  verbatim.  Hammond  scheduled  an  elaborate 
cleaning  of  the  houses  every  spring  and  fall.  The  houses  were 
to  be  completely  emptied  and  their  contents  sunned,  the  walls 
and  floors  were  to  be  scrubbed,  the  mattresses  to  be  emptied 
and  stuffed  with  fresh  hay  or  shucks,  the  yards  swept  and  the 
ground  under  the  houses  sprinkled  with  lime.  Furthermore, 
every  house  was  to  be  whitewashed  inside  and  out  once  a  year; 
and  the  negroes  must  appear  once  a  week  in  clean  clothes, 
"and  every  negro  habitually  uncleanly  in  person  must  be  washed 
and  scrubbed  by  order  of  the  overseer — the  driver  and  two 
other  negroes  officiating." 

As  to  schedules  of  work,  the  Carolina  and  Georgia  lowlanders 
dealt  in  tasks ;  all  the  rest  in  hours.  Telfair  wrote  briefly :  "The 
negroes  to  be  tasked  when  the  work  allows  it.  I  require  a 
reasonable  day's  work,  well  done — the  task  to  be  regulated  by 
the  state  of  the  ground  and  the  strength  of  the  negro."  Weston 
wrote  with  more  elaboration :  "A  task  is  as  much  work  as  the 
meanest  full  hand  can  do  in  nine  hours,  working  industriously. 
.  .  .  This  task  is  never  to  be  increased,  and  no  work  is 
to  be  done  over  task  except  under  the  most  urgent  necessity; 
which  over-work  is  to  be  reported  to  the  proprietor,  who  will  pay 
for  it.  No  negro  is  to  be  put  into  a  task  which  [he]  cannot 
finish  with  tolerable  ease.  It  is  a  bad  plan  to  punish  for  not 
finishing  tasks ;  it  is  subversive  of  discipline  to  leave  tasks  unfin- 
ished, and  contrary  to  justice  to  punish  for  what  cannot  be  done. 
In  nothing  does  a  good  manager  so  much  excel  a  bad  as  in 
being  able  to  discern  what  a  hand  is  capable  of  doing,  and  in 
never  attempting  to  make  him  do  more."    In  Hammond's  sched- 


268  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY  I 

I 
ule  the  first  horn  was  blown  an  hour  before  daylight  as  a  sum-    j 

mons  for  work-hands  to  rise  and  do  their  cooking  and  other 
preparations  for  the  day.  Then  at  the  summons  of  the  plow 
driver,  at  first  break  of  day,  the  plowmen  went  to  the  stables 
whose  doors  the  overseer  opened.  At  the  second  horn,  "just  • 
at  good  daylight,"  the  hoe  gang  set  out  for  the  field.  At  half 
past  eleven  the  plowmen  carried  their  mules  to  a  shelter  house 
in  the  fields,  and  at  noon  the  hoe  hands  laid  off  for  dinner,  to 
resume  work  at  one  o'clock,  except  that  in  hot  weather  the  inter- 
mission was  extended  to  a  maximum  of  three  and  a  half  hours. 
The  plowmen  led  the  way  home  by  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in 
the  evening,  and  the  hoe  hands  followed  at  sunset.  "No  work," 
said  Hammond,  "must  ever  be  required  after  dark."  Acklen  con- 
tented himself  with  specifying  that  "the  negroes  must  all  rise 
at  the  ringing  of  the  first  bell  in  the  morning,  and  retire  when 
the  last  bell  rings  at  night,  and  not  leave  their  houses  after  that 
hour  unless  on  business  or  called."  Fowler's  rule  was  of  the 
same  tenor:  "All  hands  should  be  required  to  retire  to  rest  and 
sleep  at  a  suitable  hour  and  permitted  to  remain  there  until 
such  time  as  it  will  be  necessary  to  get  out  in  time  to  reach  their 
work  by  the  time  they  can  see  well  how  to  work." 

Telfair,  Fowler  and  Hammond  authorized  the  assignment  of  ' 
gardens  and  patches  to  such  slaves  as  wanted  to  cultivate  them 
at  leisure  times.  To  prevent  these  from  becoming  a  cloak  for  I 
thefts  from  the  planter's  crops,  Telfair  and  Fowler  forbade  the 
growing  of  cotton  in  the  slaves'  private  patches,  and  Hammond 
forbade  both  cotton  and  corn.  Fowler  specifically  gave  his 
negroes  the  privilege  of  marketing  their  produce  and  poultry 
"at  suitable  leisure  times."  Hammond  had  a  rule  permitting 
each  work  hand  to  go  to  Augusta  on  some  Sunday  after  harvest; 
but  for  some  reason  he  noted  in  pencil  below  it :  "This  is  objec- 
tionable and  must  be  altered."  Telfair  and  Weston  directed 
that  their  slaves  be  given  passes  on  application,  authorizing  them 
to  go  at  proper  times  to  places  in  the  neighborhood.  The  negroes, 
however,  were  to  be  at  home  by  the  time  of  the  curfew  horn 
about  nine  o'clock  each  night.     Mating  with  slaves  on  other 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  269 

plantations  was  discouraged  as  giving  occasion  for  too  much 
journeying. 

"Marriage  is  to  be  encouraged,"  wrote  Hammond,  "as  it  adds 
to  the  comfort,  happiness  and  health  of  those  who  enter  upon 
it,  besides  insuring  a  greater  increase.  Permission  must  always 
be  obtained  from  the  master  before  marriage,  but  no  marriage 
will  be  allowed  with  negroes  not  belonging  to  the  master.  When 
sufficient  cause  can  be  shewn  on  either  side,  a  marriage  may 
be  annulled ;  but  the  offending  party  must  be  severely  punished. 
Where  both  are  in  wrong,  both  must  be  punished,  and  if  they 
insist  on  separating  must  have  a  hundred  lashes  apiece.  After 
such  a  separation,  neither  can  marry  again  for  three  years. 
For  first  marriage  a  bounty  of  $5.00,  to  be  invested  in  house- 
hold articles,  or  an  equivalent  of  articles,  shall  be  given.  If 
either  has  been  married  before,  the  bounty  shall  be  $2.50.  A 
third  marriage  shall  be  not  allowed  but  in  extreme  cases,  and  in 
such  cases,  or  where  both  have  been  married  before,  no  bounty 
will  be  given." 

"Christianity,  humanity  and  order  elevate  all,  injure  none," 
wrote  Fowler,  "whilst  infidelity,  selfishness  and  disorder  curse 
some,  delude  others  and  degrade  all.  I  therefore  want  all  of 
my  people  encouraged  to  cultivate  religious  feeling  and  morality, 
and  punished  for  inhumanity  to  their  children  or  stock,  for 
profanity,  lying  and  stealing."  And  again :  "I  would  that  every 
human  being  have  the  gospel  preached  to  them  in  its  original 
purity  and  simplicity.  It  therefore  devolves  upon  me  to  have 
these  dependants  properly  instructed  in  all  that  pertains  to  the 
salvation  of  their  souls.  To  this  end  whenever  the  services  of  a 
suitable  person  can  be  secured,  have  them  instructed  in  these 
things.  In  view  of  the  fanaticism  of  the  age,  it  behooves  the 
master  or  overseer  to  be  present  on  all  such  occasions.  They 
should  be  instructed  on  Sundays  in  the  day  time  if  practicable; 
if  not,  then  on  Sunday  night."  Acklen  wrote  in  his  usual  per- 
emptory tone :  "No  negro  preachers  but  my  own  will  be  per- 
mitted to  preach  or  remain  on  any  of  my  places.  The  regularly 
appointed  minister  for  my  places  must  preach  on  Sundays  during 
daylight,  or  quit.    The  negroes  must  not  be  suffered  to  continue 


270  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

their  night  meetings  beyond  ten  o'clock."  Telfair  in  his  rules 
merely  permitted  religious  meetings  on  Saturday  nights  and 
Sunday  mornings.  Hammond  encouraged  his  negroes  to  go  to 
church  on  Sundays,  but  permitted  no  exercises  on  the  planta- 
tion beyond  singing  and  praying.  He,  and  many  others,  encour-- 
aged  his  negroes  to  bring  him  their  complaints  against  drivers 
and  overseers,  and  even  against  their  own  ecclesiastical  authori- 
ties in  the  matter  of  interference  with  recreations. 

Fighting  among  the  negroes  was  a  common  bane  of  planters. 
Telfair  prescribed:  "If  there  is  any  fighting  on  the  plantation, 
whip  all  engaged  in  it,  for  no  matter  what  the  cause  may  have 
been,  all  are  in  the  wrong."  Weston  wrote :  "Fighting,  particu- 
larly amongst  women,  and  obscene  or  abusive  language,  is  to  be 
always  rigorously  punished." 

"Punishment  must  never  be  cruel  or  abusive,"  wrote  Acklen, 
closely  followed  by  Fowler,  "for  it  is  absolutely  mean  and 
unmanly  to  whip  a  negro  from  mere  passion  and  maUce,  and  any 
man  who  can  do  so  is  utterly  unfit  to  have  control  of  negroes; 
and  if  ever  .any  of  my  negroes  are  cruelly  or  inhumanly  treated, 
bruised,  maimed  or  otherwise  injured,  the  overseer  will  be 
promptly  discharged  and  his  salary  withheld."  Weston  recom- 
mended the  lapse  of  a  day  between  the  discovery  of  an  offense 
and  the  punishment,  and  he  restricted  the  overseer's  power  in 
general  to  fifteen  lashes.  He  continued :  "Confinement  (not  in, 
the  stocks)  is  to  be  preferred  to  whipping;  but  the  stoppage  of 
Saturday's  allowance,  and  doing  whole  task  on  Saturday,  will 
suffice  to  prevent  ordinary  offenses.  Special  care  must  be  taken 
to  prevent  any  indecency  in  punishing  women.  No  driver  or 
other  negro  is  to  be  allowed  to  punish  any  person  in  any  way 
except  by  order  of  the  overseer  and  in  his  presence."  And 
again:  "Every  person  should  be  made  perfectly  to  understand 
what  they  are  punished  for,  and  should  be  made  to  perceive  that 
they  are  not  punished  in  anger  or  through  caprice.  All  abusive 
language  or  violence  of  demeanor  should  be  avoided ;  they  reduce 
-^£  the  man  who  uses  them  to  a  level  with  the  negro,  and  are  hardly 
ever  forgotten  by  those  to  whom  they  are  addressed."    Ham- 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  271 

mond  directed  that  the  overseer  "must  never  threaten  a  negro, 

but  punish  offences  immediately  on  knowing  them ;  otherwise  he 
will  soon  have  runaways."  As  a  schedule  he  wrote :  "The  fol- 
lowing is  the  order  in  which  offences  must  be  estimated  and 
punished:  ist,  running  away;  2d,  getting  drunk  or  having 
spirits;  3d,  stealing  hogs;  4th,  stealing;  5th,  leaving  plantation 
without  permission;  6th,  absence  from  house  after  horn-blow  at 
night;  7th,  unclean  house  or  person;  8th,  neglect  of  tools;  9th, 
neglect  of  work.  The  highest  punishment  must  not  exceed  a 
hundred  lashes  in  one  day,  and  to  that  extent  only  in  extreme 
cases.  The  whip  lash  must  be  one  inch  in  width,  or  a  strap  of 
one  thickness  of  leather  i^  inches  in  width,  and  never  severely 
administered.  In  general  fifteen  to  twenty  lashes  will  be  a  suffi- 
cient flogging.  The  hands  in  every  case  must  be  secured  by  a 
cord.  Punishment  must  always  be  given  calmly,  and  never  when 
angry  or  excited."  Telfair  was  as  usual  terse:  "No  negro 
to  have  more  than  fifty  lashes  for  any  offense,  no  matter  how 
great  the  crime."  Manigault  said  nothing  of  punishments  in 
his  general  instructions,  but  sent  special  directions  when  a  case 
of  incorrigibility  was  reported :  "You  had  best  think  carefully 
respecting  him,  and  always  keep  in  mind  the  important  old 
plantation  maxim,  viz :  'never  to  threaten  a  negro,'  or  he  will 
do  as  you  and  I  would  when  at  school — he  will  run.  But  with 
such  a  one,  ...  if  you  wish  to  make  an  example  of 
him,  take  him  down  to  the  Savannah  jail  and  give  him  prison 
discipHne,  and  by  all  means  solitary  confinement,  for  three 
weeks,  when  he  will  be  glad  to  get  home  again.  .  .  .  Mind 
then  and  tell  him  that  you  and  he  are  quits,  that  you  will  never 
dwell  on  old  quarrels  with  him,  that  he  has  now  a  clear  track 
before  him'  and  all  depends  on  himself,  for  he  now  sees  how 
easy  it  is  to  fix  *a  bad  disposed  nigger.'  Then  give  my  com- 
pliments to  him  and  tell  him  that  you  wrote  me  of  his  conduct, 
and  say  if  he  don't  change  for  the  better  I'll  sell  him  to  a  slave 
trader  who  will  send  him  to  New  Orleans,  where  I  have  already 
sent  several  of  the  gang  for  misconduct,  or  their  running  away 
for  no  cause."     In  one  case  Manigault  lost  a  slave  by  suicide 


272  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

in  the  river  when  a  driver  brought  him  up  for  punishment  but 
allowed  him  to  run  before  it  was  administered.^ 

As  to  rewards,  Hammond  was  the  only  one  of  these  writers 
to  prescribe  them  definitely.  His  head  driver  was  to  receive  five 
dollars,  the  plow  driver  three  dollars,  and  the  ditch  driver 
and  stock  minder  one  dollar  each  every  Christmas  day,  and  the 
nurse  a  dollar  and  the  midwife  two  dollars  for  every  actual 
increase  of  two  on  the  place.  Further,  "for  every  infant  thir- 
teen months  old  and  in  sound  health,  that  has  been  properly 
attended  to,  the  mother  shall  receive  a  muslin  or  calico  frock.'' 

"The  head  driver,"  Hammond  wrote,  "is  the  most  important 
negro  on  the  plantation,  and  is  not  required  to  work  like  other 
hands.  He  is  to  be  treated  with  more  respect  than  any  other 
negro  by  both  master  and  overseer.  .  .  .  He  is  to  be  re- 
quired to  maintain  proper  discipline  at  all  times;  to  see  that 
no  negro  idles  or  does  bad  work  in  the  field,  and  to  punish  it 
with  discretion  on  the  spot.  .  .  ,  He  is  a  confidential  servant, 
and  may  be  a  guard  against  any  excesses  or  omissions  of  the 
overseer."  Weston,  forbidding  his  drivers  to  inflict  punish- 
ments except  at  the  overseer's  order  and  in  his  presence,  de- 
scribed their  functions  as  the  maintenance  of  quiet  in  the  quarter 
and  of  discipline  at  large,  the  starting  of  the  slaves  to  the  fields 
each  morning,  the  assignment  and  supervision  of  tasks,  and 
the  inspection  of  "such  things  as  the  overseer  only  generally 
superintends."  Telfair  informed  his  overseer:  "I  have  no 
driver.  You  are  to  task  the  negroes  yourself,  and  each  negro 
is  responsible  to  you  for  his  own  work,  and  nobody's  else." 

Of  the  master's  own  functions  Hammond  wrote  in  another 
place :  "A  planter  should  have  all  his  work  laid  out,  days,  weeks, 
months,  seasons  and  years  ahead,  according  to  the  nature  of  it. 
He  must  go  from  job  to  job  without  losing  a  moment  in  turning 
round,  and  he  must  have  all  the  parts  of  his  work  so  arranged 
that  due  proportion  of  attention  may  be  bestowed  upon  each 
at  the  proper  time.  More  is  lost  by  doing  work  out  of  season, 
and  doing  it  better  or  worse  than  is  requisite,  than  can  readily 
be  supposed.     Negroes  are  harassed  by  it,  too,  instead  of  being 

'Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  32,  94, 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  273 

indulged ;  so  are  mules,  and  everything  else.  A  halting,  vacil- 
lating, undecided  course,  now  idle,  now  overstrained,  is  more 
fatal  on  a  plantation  than  in  any  other  kind  of  business — 
ruinous  as  it  is  in  any."^ 

In  the  overseer  all  the  virtues  of  a  master  were  desired, 
with  a  deputy's  obedience  added.  Corbin  enjoined  upon  his  staff 
that  they  "attend  their  business  with  diligence,  keep  the  negroes 
in  good  order,  and  enforce  obedience  by  the  example  of  their 
own  industry,  which  is  a  more  effectual  method  in  every  respect 
than  hurry  and  severity.  The  ways  of  industry,"  he  continued, 
"are  constant  and  regular,  not  to  be  in  a  hurry  at  one  time 
and  do  nothing  at  another,  but  to  be  always  usefully  and  steadily 
employed.  A  man  who  carries  on  business  in  this  manner  will 
be  prepared  for  every  incident  that  happens.  He  will  see  what 
work  may  be  proper  at  the  distance  of  some  time  and  be 
gradually  and  leisurely  preparing  for  it.  By  this  foresight  he 
will  never  be  in  confusion  himself,  and  his  business,  instead 
of  a  labor,  will  be  a  pleasure  to  him."  Weston  wrote :  "The 
proprietor  wishes  particularly  to  impress  upon  the  overseer  the 
criterions  by  which  he  will  judge  of  his  usefullness  and  capacity. 
First,  by  the  general  well-being  of  all  the  negroes ;  their  cleanly 
appearance,  respectful  manners,  active  and  vigorous  obedience ; 
their  completion  of  their  tasks  well  and  early ;  the  small  amount 
of  punishment ;  the  excess  of  births  over  deaths ;  the  small  num- 
ber of  persons  in  hospital ;  and  the  health  of  the  children.  Sec- 
ondly, the  condition  and  fatness  of  the  cattle  and  mules ;  the 
good  repair  of  all  the  fences  and  buildings,  harness,  boats, 
flats  and  ploughs ;  more  particularly  the  good  order  of  the  banks 
and  trunks,  and  the  freedom  of  the  fields  from  grass  and  volunteer 
[rice].  Thirdly,  the  amount  and  quality  of  the  rice  and  provision 
crops.  .  .  .  The  overseer  is  expressly  forbidden  from  three 
things,  viz. :  bleeding,  giving  spirits  to  any  negro  without  a  doc- 
tor's order,  and  letting  any  negro  on  the  place  have  or  keep  any 
gun,  powder  or  shot."  One  of  Acklen's  prohibitions  upon  his 
overseers  was:     "Having  connection  with  any  of  my   female 

"Letter  of  Hammond  to  William  Gilmore  Simms,  Jan.  21,  1841,  from 
Hammond's  MS.  copy  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


274  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

servants  will  most  certainly  be  visited  with  a  dismissal  from 
my  employment,  and  no  excuse  can  or  will  be  taken." 

Hammond  described  the  functions  as  follows :  "The  overseer 
will  never  be  expected  to  work  in  the  field,  but  he  must  always 
be  with  the  hands  when  not  otherwise  engaged  in  the  emr 
ployer's  business.  .  .  .  The  overseer  must  never  be  absent  a 
single  night,  nor  an  entire  day,  without  permission  previously 
obtained.  Whenever  absent  at  church  or  elsewhere  he  must  be 
on  the  plantation  by  sundown  without  fail.  He  must"  attend 
every  night  and  morning  at  the  stables  and  see  that  the  mules 
are  watered,  cleaned  and  fed,  and  the  doors  locked.  He  must 
keep  the  stable  keys  at  night,  and  all  the  keys,  in  a  safe  place, 
and  never  allow  anyone  to  unlock  a  barn,  smoke-house  or  other 
depository  of  plantation  stores  but  himself.  He  must  endeavor, 
also,  to  be  with  the  plough  hands  always  at  noon."  He  must 
also  see  that  the  negroes  are  out  promptly  in  the  morning,  and 
in  their  houses  after  curfew,  and  must  show  no  favoritism  among 
the  negroes.  He  must  carry  on  all  experiments  as  directed  by 
the  employer,  and  use  all  new  implements  and  methods  which 
the  employer  may  determine  upon;  and  he  must  keep  a  full 
plantation  diary  and  make  monthly  inventories.  Finally,  "The 
negroes  must  be  made  to  obey  and  to  work,  which  may  be  done, 
by  an  overseer  who  attends  regularly  to  his  business,  with  very 
little  whipping.  Much  whipping  indicates  a  bad  tempered  or 
inattentive  manager,  and  will  not  be  allowed."  His  overseer  might 
quit  employment  on  a  month's  notice,  and  might  be  discharged 
without  notice.     Acklen's  dicta  were  to  the  same  general  effect. 

As  to  the  relative  importance  of  the  several  functions  of  an 
overseer,  all  these  planters  were  in  substantial  agreement.  As 
Fowler  put  it :  "After  taking  proper  care  of  the  negroes,  stock, 
etc.,  the  next  most  important  duty  of  the  overseer  is  to  make, 
if  practicable,  a  sufficient  quantity  of  corn,  hay,  fodder,  meat, 
potatoes  and  other  vegetables  for  the  consumption  of  the  plan- 
tation, and  then  as  much  cotton  as  can  be  made  by  requiring 
good  and  reasonable  labor  of  operatives  and  teams."  Likewise 
Henry  Laurens,  himself  a  prosperous  planter  of  the  earlier  time 
as  well  as  a  statesman,  wrote  to  an  overseer  of  whose  heavy 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  275 

tasking  he  had  learned:  "Submit  to  make  less  rice  and  keep 
my  negroes  at  home  in  some  degree  of  happiness  in  preference  to 
large  crops  acquired  by  rigour  and  barbarity  to  those  poor  crea- 
tures." And  to  a  new  incumbent :  "I  have  now  to  recommend  to 
you  the  care  of  my  negroes  in  general,  but  particularly  the  sick 
ones.  Desire  Mrs.  White  not  to  be  sparing  of  red  wine  for 
those  who  have  the  flux  or  bad  loosenesses;  let  them  be  well 
attended  night  and  day,  and  if  one  wench  is  not  sufficient  add 
another  to  nurse  them.  With  the  well  ones  use  gentle  means 
mixed  with  easy  authority  first — if  that  does  not  succeed,  make 
choice  of  the  most  stubborn  one  or  two  and  chastise  them 
severely  but  properly  and  with  mercy,  that  they  may  be  con- 
vinced that  the  end  of  correction  is  to  be  amendment."  Again, 
alluding  to  one  of  his  slaves  who  had  been  gathering  the  pennies 
of  his  fellows :  "Amos  has  a  great  inclination  to  turn  rum 
merchant.  If  his  confederate  comes  to  that  plantation,  I  charge 
you  to  discipline  him  with  thirty-nine  sound  lashes  and  turn  him 
out  of  the  gate  and  see  that  he  goes  quite  off."^ 

The  published  advice  of  planters  to  their  fellows  was  quite  in 
keeping  with  these  instructions  to  overseers.  About  1809,  for 
example,  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline,  the  leading  Virginian  advo- 
cate of  soil  improvement  in  his  day,  wrote  of  the  care  and  control 
of  slaves  as  follows :  "The  addition  of  comfort  to  mere  neces- 
saries is  a  price  paid  by  the  master  for  the  advantages  he  will 
derive  from  binding  his  slave  to  his  service  by  a  ligament  stronger 
than  chains,  far  beneath  their  value  in  a  pecuniary  point  of 
view ;  and  he  will  moreover  gain  a  stream  of  agreeable  reflections 
throughout  life,  which  will  cost  him  nothing,"  He  recommended 
fireproof  brick  houses,  warm  clothing,  and  abundant,  varied  food. 
Customary  plenty  in  meat  and  vegetables,  he  said,  would  not 
only  remove  occasions  for  pilfering,  but  would  give  the  master 
effective  power  to  discourage  it;  for  upon  discovering  the  loss 
of  any  goods  by  theft  he  might  put  his  whole  force  of  slaves  upon 
a  limited  diet  for  a  time  and  thus  suggest  to  the  thief  that  on 
any  future  occasion  his  fellows  would  be  under  pressure  to  inform 
on  him  as  a  means  of  relieving  their  own  privations.     "A  daily 

*  D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  pp.  133,  192. 


276  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

allowance  of  cyder,"  Taylor  continued,  "will  extend  the  success 
of  this  system  for  the  management  of  slaves,  and  particularly 
its  effect  of  diminishing  corporal  punishments.  But  the  reader 
is  warned  that  a  stern  authority,  strict  discipline  and  complete 
subordination  must  be  combined  with  it  to  gain  any  success  at 
all."« 

Another  Virginian's  essay,  of  1834,  ran  as  follows:  Virginia 
negroes  are  generally  better  tempered  than  any  other  people; 
they  are  kindly,  grateful,  attached  to  persons  and  places,  endur- 
ing and  patient  in  fatigue  and  hardship,  contented  and  cheer- 
ful. Their  control  should  be  uniform  and  consistent,  not  an 
alternation  of  rigor  and  laxity.  Punishment  for  real  faults  should 
be  invariable  but  moderate.  "The  best  evidence  of  the  good 
management  of  slaves  is  the  keeping  up  of  good  discipHne  with 
little  or  no  punishment."  The  treatment  should  be  impartial 
except  for  good  conduct  which  should  bring  rewards.  Praise 
is  often  a  better  cure  for  laziness  than  stripes.  The  manager 
should  know  the  temper  of  each  slave.  The  proud  and  high 
spirited  are  easily  handled :  "Your  slow  and  sulky  negro,  al- 
though he  may  have  an  even  temper,  is  the  devil  to  manage.  The 
negro  women  are  all  harder  to  manage  than  the  men.  The  only 
way  to  get  along  with  them  is  by  kind  words  and  flattery.  If 
you  want  to  cure  a  sloven,  giye  her  something  nice  occasionally  to 
wear,  and  praise  her  up  to  the  skies  whenever  she  has  on  any- 
thing tolerably  decent."  Eschew  suspicion,  for  it  breeds  dishon- 
esty. Promote  harmony  and  sound  methods  among  your  neigh- 
bors. "A  good  disciplinarian  in  the  midst  of  bad  managers  of 
slaves  cannot  do  much ;  and  without  discipline  there  cannot  be 
profit  to  the  master  or  comfort  to  the  slaves."  Feed  and  clothe 
your  slaves  well.  The  best  preventive  of  theft  is  plenty  of  pork. 
Let  them  have  poultry  and  gardens  and  fruit  trees  to  attach  them 
to  their  houses  and  promote  amenability.  "The  greatest  bar 
to  good  discipline  in  Virginia  is  the  number  of  grog  shops  in 
every  farmer's  neighborhood."    There  is  no  severity  in  the  state, 

'John  Taylor,  of  Caroline  County,  Virginia,  Arator,  Being  a  Series  of 
'Agricultural  Essays  (2d  ed.,  Georgetown,  D.  C,  1814),  pp.  122-125. 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  277 

and  there  v/ill  be  no  occasion  for  it  again  if  the  fanatics  will 
only  let  us  alone.^ 

An  essay  written  after  long  experience  by  Robert  Collins, 
of  Macon,  Georgia,  which  was  widely  circulated  in  the  'fifties, 
was  in  the  same  tone:  "The  best  interests  of  all  parties  are 
promoted  by  a  kind  and  liberal  treatment  on  the  part  of  the 
owner,  and  the  requirement  of  proper  discipline  and  strict  obe- 
dience on  the  part  of  the  slave.  .  .  .  Every  attempt  to  force 
the  slave  beyond  the  limits  of  reasonable  service  by  cruelty  or 
hard  treatment,  so  far  from  extorting  more  work,  only  tends 
to  make  him  unprofitable,  unmanageable,  a  vexation  and  a  curse." 
The  quarters  should  be  well  shaded,  the  houses  free  of  the  ground, 
well  ventilated,  and  large  enough  for  comfort;  the  bedding  and 
blankets  fully  adequate.  'Tn  former  years  the  writer  tried  many 
ways  and  expedients  to  economize  in  the  provision  of  slaves 
by  using  more  of  the  vegetable  and  cheap  articles  of  diet,  and 
less  of  the  costly  and  substantial.  But  time  and  experience  have 
fully  proven  the  error  of  a  stinted  policy.  .  .  .  The  allow- 
ance now  given  per  week  to  each  hand  .  .1.  is  five  pounds 
of  good  clean  bacon  and  one  quart  of  molasses,  with  as  much 
good  bread  as  they  require;  and  in  the  fall,  or  sickly  season  of 
the  year,  or  on  sickly  places,  the  addition  of  one  pint  of  strong 
cofifee,  sweetened  with  sugar,  every  morning  before  going  to 
work."  The  slaves  may  well  have  gardens,  but  the  assignment 
of  patches  for  market  produce  too  greatly  "encourages  a  traffic 
on  their  own  account,  and  presents  a  temptation  and  oppor- 
tunity, during  the  process  of  gathering,  for  an  unscrupulous 
fellow  to  mix  a  little  of  his  master's  produce  with  his  own.j 
It  is  much  better  to  give  each  hand  whose  conduct  has  been 
such  as  to  merit  it  an  equivalent  in  money  at  the  end  of  the  year; 
it  is  much  less  trouble,  and  more  advantageous  to  both  parties." 
Collins  further  advocated  plenty  of  clothing,  moderate  hours, 
work  by  tasks  in  cotton  picking  and  elsewhere  when  feasible, 
and  firm  though  kindly  discipline.  "Slaves,"  he  said,  "have  no 
respect  or  affection  for  a  master  who  indulges  them  over  much. 

•"On  the  Management  of  Negroes.  Addressed  to  the  Farmers  and 
Overseers  of  Virginia,"  signed  "H.  C,"  in  the  Farmer's  Register,  I,  564, 
565  (February,  1834). 


278  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

.  .  .  Negroes  are  by  nature  tyrannical  in  tlieir  dispositions, 
and  if  allowed,  the  stronger  will  abuse  the  weaker,  husbands 
will  often  abuse  their  wives  and  mothers  their  children,  so  that 
it  becomes  a  prominent  duty  of  owners  and  overseers  to  keep 
peace  and  prevent  quarrelling  and  disputes  among  them;  and 
summary  punishment  should  follow  any  violation  of  this  rule. 
Slaves  are  also  a  people  that  enjoy  religious  privileges.  Many 
of  them  place  much  value  upon  it ;  and  to  every  reasonable 
extent  that  advantage  should  be  allowed  them.  They  are. never 
injured  by  preaching,  but  thousands  become  wiser  and  better 
people  and  more  trustworthy  servants  by  their  attendance  at 
church.  Religious  services  should  be  provided  and  encouraged 
on  every  plantation.  A  zealous  and  vehement  style,  both  in 
doctrine  and  manner,  is  best  adapted  to  their  temperament.  They 
are  good  believers  in  mysteries  and  miracles,  ready  converts,  and 
adhere  with  much  pertinacity  to  their  opinions  when  formed."  ^°  It 
is  clear  that  Collins  had  observed  plantation  negroes  long  and  well. 
Advice  very  similar  to  the  foregoing  examples  was  also  printed 
in  the  form  of  manuals  at  the  front  of  blank  books  for  the  keep- 
ing of  plantation  records  ;^^  and  various  planters  described  their 
own  methods  in  operation  as  based  on  the  same  principles.  One 
of  these  living  at  Chunnennuggee,  Alabama,  signing  himself 
"N.  B.  P.,"  w^rote  in  1852  an  account  of  the  problems  he  had  met 
and  the  solutions  he  had  applied.  Owning  some  150  slaves, 
he  had  lived  away  from  his  plantation  until  about  a  decade  prior 
to  this  writing;  but  in  spite  of  careful  selection  he  could  never 
get  an  overseer  combining  the  qualities  necessary  in  a  good  man- 
ager. "They  were  generally  on  extremes ;  those  celebrated  for 
making  large  crops  were  often  too  severe,  and  did  everything  by 

*"  Robert  Collins,  "Essay  on  the  Management  of  Slaves,"  reprinted  in 
DeBotv's  Review,  XVII,  421-426,  and  partly  reprinted  in  F.  L.  Olmsted, 
Seaboard  Slave  States,  pp.  692-697. 

"Pleasant  Suit,  Farmer's  Accountant  and  Instructions  for  Overseers 
(Richmond,  Va.,  1828)  ;  Affleck's  Cotton  Plantation  Record  and  Account 
Book,  reprinted  in  DeBoui's  Review,  XVIII,  339-345,  and  in  Thomas  W. 
Knox,  CampHre  and  Cotton  Field  (New  York,  1865),  pp.  358-364.  See  also 
for  varied  and  interesting  data  as  to  rules,  experience  and  advice ;  Thomas 
S.  Clay  (of  Bryan  County,  Georgia),  Detail  of  a  Plan  for  the  Moral  Im- 
provement of  Negroes  on  Plantations  (1833)  ;  and  DeBow's  Review,  XII, 
291,  292;  XIX.  358-363;  XXI,  147-149,  277-279;  XXIV,  321-326;  XXV,  463; 
XXVI,  579,  580;  XXIX,   112-11S,  357-368. 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  279 

coercion.  Hence  turmoil  and  strife  ensued.  The  negroes  were 
ill  treated  and  ran  away.  On  the  other  hand,  when  he  employed 
a  good-natured  man  there  was  a  want  of  proper  discipline;  the 
negroes  became  unmanageable  and,  as  a  natural  result,  the  farm 
was  brought  into  debt."  The  owner  then  entered  residence  him- 
self and  applied  methods  which  resulted  in  contentment,  health 
and  prolific  increase  among  the  slaves,  and  in  consistently  good 
crops.  The  men  were  supplied  with  wives  at  home  so  far  as 
was  practicable ;  each  family  had  a  dry  and  airy  house  to  itself, 
with  a  poultry  house  and  a  vegetable  garden  behind ;  the  rations 
issued  weekly  were  three  and  a  half  pounds  of  bacon  to  each 
hand  over  ten  years  old,  together  with  a  peck  of  meal,  or  more 
if  required ;  the  children  in  the  day  nursery  were  fed  from  the 
master's  kitchen  with  soup,  milk,  bacon,  vegetables  and  bread; 
the  hands  had  three  suits  of  working  clothes  a  year;  the  women 
were  given  time  off  for  washing,  and  did  their  mending  in  bad 
weather;  all  hands  had  to  dress  up  and  go  to  church  on  Sunday 
when  preaching  was  near;  and  a  clean  outfit  of  working  clothes 
was  required  every  Monday.  The  chief  distinction  of  this  plan- 
tation, however,  lay  in  its  device  for  profit  sharing.  To  each 
slave  was  assigned  a  half-acre  plot  with  the  promise  that  if  he 
worked  with  diligence  in  the  master's  crop  the  whole  gang  would 
in  turn  be  set  to  work  his  crop.  This  was  useful  in  preventing 
night  and  Sunday  work  by  the  negroes.  The  proceeds  of  their 
crops,  ranging  from  ten  to  fifty  dollars,  were  expended  by  the 
master  at  their  direction  for  Sunday  clothing  and  other  sup- 
plies.^^  On  a  sugar  plantation  visited  by  Olmsted  a  sum  of  as 
many  dollars  as  there  were  hogsheads  in  the  year's  crop  was 
distributed  among  the  slaves  every  Christmas.^^ 

Of  overseers  in  general,  the  great  variety  in  their  functions, 
their  scales  of  operation  and  their  personal  qualities  make  sweep- 
ing assertions  hazardous.  Some  were  at  just  one  remove  from 
the  authority  of  a  great  planter,  as  is  suggested  by  the  follow- 
ing advertisement:  "Wanted,  a  manager  to  superintend  several 
rice  plantations  on  the  Santee  River.    As  the  business  is  extensive, 

"Southern  Quarterly  Review,  XXI,  aiS,  216. 
"  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  660. 


28o  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

a  proportionate  salary  will  be  made,  and  one  or  two  young  men 
of  his  own  selection  employed  under  him.^*  A  healthful  summer 
residence  on  the  seashore  is  provided  for  himself  and  family. 
Others  were  hardly  more  removed  from  the  status  of  common 
field  hands.  Lawrence  Tompkins,  for  example,  signed  with  his 
mark  in  1779  a  contract  to  oversee  the  four  slaves  of  William 
Allason,  near  Alexandria,  and  to  work  steadily  with  them.  He 
was  to  receive  three  barrels  of  corn  and  three  hundred  pounds 
of  pork  as  his  food  allowance,  and  a  fifth  share  of  the  tobacco, 
hemp  and  flax  crops  and  a  sixth  of  the  corn ;  but  if  he  neglected 
his  work  he  might  be  dismissed  without  pay  of  any  sort.^^  Some 
overseers  were  former  planters  who  had  lost  their  property,  some 
were  planters'  sons  working  for  a  start  in  life,  some  were  English 
and  German  farmers  who  had  brought  their  talents  to  what 
they  hoped  might  prove  the  world's  best  market,  but  most  of  them 
were  of  the  native  yeomanry  which  abounded  in  virtually  all 
parts  of  the  South.  Some  owned  a  few  slaves  whom  they  put  on 
hire  into  their  employers'  gangs,  thereby  hastening  their  own  at- 
tainment of  the  means  to  become  planters  on  their  own  score.^' 

If  the  master  lived  on  the  plantation,  as  was  most  commonly 
the  case,  the  overseer's  responsibilities  were  usually  confined  to 
the  daily  execution  of  orders  in  supervising  the  slaves  in  the 
fields  and  the  quarters.  But  when  the  master  was  an  absentee 
the  opportunity  for  abuses  and  misunderstandings  increased. 
Jurisdiction  over  slaves  and  the  manner  of  its  exercise  were  the 
grounds  of  most  frequent  complaint.  On  the  score  of  authority, 
for  example,  a  Virginia  overseer  in  the  employ  of  Robert  Carter 
wrote  him  in  1787  in  despair  at  the  conduct  of  a  woman  named 
Suckey :  "I  sent  for  hir  to  Come  in  the  morning  to  help  Secoure 
the  foder,  but  She  Sent  me  word  that  She  would  not  come  to 
worke  that  Day,  and  that  you  had  ordered  her  to  wash  hir 
Cloaiths  and  goo  to  Any  meeting  She  pleased  any  time  in  the 
weke  without  my  leafe,  and  on  monday  when  I  Come  to  Reken 
with  hir  about  it  She  Said  it  was  your  orders  and  She  would 

^* Southern  Patriot  (Charleston,  S.  C),  Jan.  9,  1821. 
"MS.  Letter  book,  1770-1787,  among  the  Allason  papers  in  the  New 
York  Public  Library. 

"D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens,  pp.  21,  I3S- 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  281 

do  it  in  Defiance  of  me.  ...  I  hope  if  Suckey  is  aloud 
that  privilige  more  than  the  Rest,  that  she  will  bee  moved 
to  some  other  place,  and  one  Come  in  her  Room."^'^  On  the 
score  of  abuses,  Standi  Berwick,  an  overseer  in  southwestern 
Georgia,  wrote  in  1855  to  John  B.  Lamar:  "I  received  your 
letter  on  yesterday  ev'ng.  Was  vary  sorry  to  hear  that  you 
had  heard  that  I  was  treating  your  negroes  so  cruely.  Now, 
sir,  I  do  say  to  you  in  truth  that  the  report  is  false.  Thear 
is  no  truth  in  it.  No  man  nor  set  of  men  has  ever  seen  me 
mistreat  one  of  the  negroes  on  the  place."  After  declaring  that 
miscarriages  by  two  of  the  women  had  been  due  to  no  require- 
ment of  work,  he  continued :  "The  reports  that  have  been  sent 
must  have  been  carried  from  this  place  by  negroes.  The  fact 
is  I  have  made  the  negro  men  work,  an  made  them  go  strait. 
That  is  what  is  the  matter,  an  is  the  reason  why  my  place  is 
talk  of  the  settlement.  I  have  found  among  the  negro  men  two 
or  three  hard  cases  an  I  have  had  to  deal  rite  ruff,  but  not  cruly 
at  all.  Among  them  Abram  has  been  as  triflin  as  any  man  on 
the  place.  Now,  sir,  what  I  have  wrote  you  is  truth,  and  it  cant 
be  disputed  by  no  man  on  earth."^^ 

To  diminish  the  inducement  for  overdriving,  the  method  of 
paying  the  overseers  by  crop  shares,  which  commonly  prevailed 
in  the  colonial  period,  was  generally  replaced  in  the  nineteenth 
century  by  that  of  fixed  salaries.  As  a  surer  preventive  of 
embezzlement,  a  trusty  slave  was  in  some  cases  given  the  store- 
house keys  in  preference  to  the  overseer;  and  sometimes  even 
when  the  master  was  an  absentee  an  overseer  was  wholly  dis- 
pensed with  and  a  slave  foreman  was  given  full  charge.  This 
practice  would  have  been  still  more  common  had  not  the  laws 
discouraged  it.^^  Some  planters  refused  to  leave  their  slaves 
in  the  full  charge  of  deputies  of  any  kind,  even  for  short  periods. 
For  example,  Francis  Corbin  in  18 19  explained  to  James  Madison 
that  he  must  postpone  an  intended  visit  because  of  the  absence 
of  his  son.  "Until  he  arrives,"  Corbin  wrote,  "I  dare  not,  in 
common  prudence,  leave  my  affairs  to  the  sole  management  of 

"Plantation  and  Frontier,  1,  325. 

"Ibid.,  I,  312,  313. 

"  Olmsted,  Seaboard  States,  p.  206. 


282  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

overseers,  who  in  these  days  are  little  respected  by  our  intelligent 
negroes,  many  of  whom  are  far  superior  in  mind,  morals  and 
manners  to  those  who  are  placed  in  authority  over  them.''^" 

Various  phases  of  the  problem  of  management  are  illustrated 
in  a  letter  of  A.  H.  Pemberton  of  the  South  Carolina  midlands 
to  James  H.  Hammond  at  the  end  of  1846.  The  writer  de- 
scribed himself  as  unwilling  to  sacrifice  his  agricultural  reading 
in  order  to  superintend  his  slaves  in  person,  but  as  having  too 
small  a  force  to  aflford  the  employment  of  an  overseer  pure  and 
simple.  For  the  preceding  year  he  had  had  one  charged  with 
the  double  function  of  working  in  person  and  supervising  the 
slaves'  work  also;  but  this  man's  excess  of  manual  zeal  had  im- 
paired his  managerial  usefulness.  What  he  himself  did  was  well 
done,  said  Pemberton,  "and  he  would  do  all  and  leave  the  negroes 
to  do  virtually  nothing;  and  as  they  would  of  course  take  ad- 
vantage of  this,  what  he  did  was  more  than  counterbalanced  by 
what  they  did  not."  Furthermore,  this  employee,  "who  worked 
harder  than  any  man  I  ever  saw,"  used  little  judgment  or  fore- 
sight. "Withal,  he  has  always  been  accustomed  to  the  careless 
Southern  practice  generally  of  doing  things  temporarily  and  in  a 
hurry,  just  to  last  for  the  present,  and  allowing  the  negroes 
to  leave  plows  and  tools  of  all  kinds  just  where  they  use  them,  no 
matter  where,  so  that  they  have  to  be  hunted  all  over  the  place 
when  wanted.  And  as  to  stock,  he  had  no  idea  of  any  more 
attention  to  them  than  is  common  in  the  ordinarily  cruel  and 
neglectful  habits  of  the  South."  Pemberton  then  turned  to  lamen- 
tation at  having  let  slip  a  recent  opportunity  to  buy  at  auction 
"a  remarkably  fine  looking  negro  as  to  size  and  strength,  very 
black,  about  thirty-five  or  forty,  and  so  intelligent  and  trust- 
worthy that  he  had  charge  of  a  separate  plantation  and  eight  or 
ten  hands  some  ten  or  twelve  miles  from  home."  The  procuring 
of  such  a  foreman  would  precisely  have  solved  Pemberton's 
problem;  the  failure  to  do  so  left  him  in  his  far  from  hopeful 
search  for  a  paragon  manager  and  workman  combined. ^^ 

On  the  whole,  the  planters  were  disposed  to  berate  the  over- 

*•  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  XLIII,  261. 
*^  MS.  among  the  Hammond  papers  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  283 

seers  as  a  class  for  dishonesty,  inattention  and  self  indulgence. 
The  demand  for  new  and  better  ones  was  constant.  For  exam- 
ple, the  editor  of  the  American  Agriculturist,  whose  office  was  at 
New  York,  announced  in  1846:  "We  are  almost  daily  beset  with 
applications  for  properly  educated  managers  for  farms  and  plan- 
tations— we  mean  for  such  persons  as  are  up  to  the  improve- 
ments of  the  age,  and  have  the  capacity  to  carry  them  into 
effect."^^  Youths  occasionally  offered  themselves  as  apprentices. 
One  of  them,  in  Louisiana,  published  the  following  notice  in 
1822:  "A  young  man  wishing  to  acquire  knowledge  of  cotton 
planting  would  engage  for  twelve  months  as  overseer  and  keep 
the  accounts  of  a  plantation.  .  .  .  Unquestionable  reference 
as  to  character  will  be  given, "^^  And  a  South  Carolinian  in  1829 
proposed  that  the  practice  be  systematized  by  the  appointment 
of  local  committees  to  bring  intelligent  lads  into  touch  with 
planters  willing  to  take  them  as  indentured  apprentices. ^^  The 
lack  of  system  persisted,  however,  both  in  agricultural  education 
and  in  the  procuring  of  managers.  In  the  opinion  of  Basil  Hall 
and  various  others  the  overseers  were  commonly  better  than  the 
reputation  of  their  class,^^  but  this  is  not  to  say  that  they  were 
conspicuous  either  for  expertness  or  assiduity.  On  the  whole 
they  had  about  as  much  human  nature,  with  its  merits  and  fail- 
ings, as  the  planters  or  the  slaves  or  anybody  else. 

It  is  notable  that  George  Washington  was  one  of  the  least 
tolerant  employers  and  masters  who  put  themselves  upon  record.-* 
This  was  doubtless  due  to  his  own  punctiliousness  and  thorough 
devotion  to  system  as  well  as  to  his  often  baffled  wish  to  diversify 
his  crops  and  upbuild  his  fields.  When  in  1793  he  engaged 
William  Pearce  as  a  new  steward  for  the  group  of  plantations 
comprising  the  Mount  Vernon  estate,  he  enjoined  strict  super- 

**  American  Agriculturist,  V,  24. 

''Louisiana  Herald  (Alexandria,  La.),  Jan.  12,  1822,  advertisement. 

*^  Southern  Agriculturist,  II,  271. 

*  Basil  Hall,  Travels  in  North  America,  III,  193. 

**  Voluminous  plantation  data  are  preserved  in  the  Washington  MSS. 
in  the  Library  of  Congress.  Those  here  used  are  drawn  from  the  letters 
of  Washington  published  in  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society  Memoirs, 
vol.  IV;  entitled  George  Washington  and  Mount  Vernon.  A  map  of  the 
Mount  Vernon  estate  is  printed  in  Washington's  Writings  (W.  C.  Ford 
ed.),  XII,  358. 


284  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

vision  of  his  overseers  '"to  keep  them  from  running  about  and 
to  oblige  them  to  remain  constantly  with  their  people,  and  more- 
over to  see  at  what  time  they  turn  out  in  the  morning — for," 
said  he,  "I  have  strong  suspicions  that  this  with  some  of  them 
is  at  a  late  hour,  the  consequences  of  which  to  the  negroes  is 
not  difficult  to  foretell."  "To  treat  them  civilly,"  Washington 
continued,  "is  no  more  than  what  all  men  are  entitled  to;  but 
my  advice  to  you  is,  keep  them  at  a  proper  distance,  for  they 
will  grow  upon  familiarity  in  proportion  as  you  will  sink  in 
authority  if  you  do  not.  Pass  by  no  faults  or  neglects,  particu- 
larly at  first,  for  overlooking  one  only  serves  to  generate  another, 
and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  some  of  them,  one  in  par- 
ticular, will  try  at  first  what  lengths  he  may  go."  Particularizing 
as  to  the  members  of  his  staff,  Washington  described  their  several 
characteristics  :  Stuart  was  intelligent  and  apparently  honest  and 
attentive,  but  vain  and  talkative,  and  usually  backward  in  his 
schedule;  Crow  would  be  efficient  if  kept  strictly  at  his  duty, 
but  seemed  prone  to  visiting  and  receiving  visits.  "This  of 
course  leaves  his  people  too  much  to  themselves,  which  pro- 
duces idleness  or  slight  work  on  the  one  side  and  flogging  on 
the  other,  the  last  of  which,  besides  the  dissatisfaction  which  it 
creates,  has  in  one  or  two  instances  been  productive  of  serious 
consequences."  IMcKay  was  a  "sickly,  slothful  and  stupid  sort 
of  fellow,"  too  much  disposed  to  brutality  in  the  treatment  of 
the  slaves  in  his  charge ;  Butler  seemed  to  have  "no  more  author- 
ity over  the  negroes  .  .  .  than  an  old  woman  would  have" ; 
and  Green,  the  overseer  of  the  carpenters,  was  too  much  on  a 
level  with  the  slaves  for  the  exertion  of  control.  Davy,  the  negro 
foreman  at  ^luddy  Hole,  was  rated  in  his  master's  esteem  higher 
than  some  of  his  white  colleagues,  though  Washington  had  sus- 
picions concerning  the  fate  of  certain  lambs  which  had  vanished 
while  in  his  care.  Indeed  the  overseers  all  and  several  were 
suspected  from  time  to  time  of  drunkenness,  waste,  theft  and 
miscellaneous  rascality.  In  the  last  of  these  categories  Wash- 
ington seems  to  have  included  their  efforts  to  secure  higher 
wages. 

The  slaves  in  their  turn  were  suspected  of  ruining  horses  by 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  285 

riding  them  at  night,  and  of  embezzling  grain  issued  for  plant- 
ing, as  well  as  of  lying  and  malingering  in  general.  The  car- 
penters, Washington  said,  were  notorious  piddlers;  and  not  a 
slave  about  the  mansion  house  was  worthy  of  trust.  Pretences 
of  illness  as  excuses  for  idleness  were  especially  annoying.  'Ts 
there  anything  particular  in  the  cases  of  Ruth,  Hannah  and 
Pegg,"  he  enquired,  "that  they  have  been  returned  as  sick 
for  several  weeks  together?  ...  If  they  are  not  made  to 
do  what  their  age  and  strength  will  enable  them,  it  will  be  a 
very  bad  example  to  others,  none  of  whom  would  work  if  by 
pretexts  they  can  avoid  it."  And  again :  "By  the  reports  I 
perceive  that  for  every  day  Betty  Davis  works  she  is  laid  up 
two.  If  she  is  indulged  in  this  idleness  she  will  grow  worse  and 
worse,  for  she  has  a  disposition  to  be  one  of  the  most  idle 
creatures  on  earth,  and  is  besides  one  of  the  most  deceitful," 
Pearce  seems  to  have  replied  that  he  was  at  a  loss  to  tell  the  false 
from  the  true.  Washington  rejoined :  "I  never  found  so  much 
difficulty  as  you  seem  to  apprehend  in  distinguishing  between  real 
and  feigned  sickness,  or  when  a  person  is  much  afflicted  with 
pain.  Nobody  can  be  very  sick  without  having  a  fever,  or  any 
other  disorder  continue  long  upon  anyone  without  reducing  them. 
.  .  .  But  my  people,  many  of  them,  will  lay  up  a  month,  at 
the  end  of  which  no  visible  change  in  their  countenance  nor  the 
loss  of  an  ounce  of  flesh  is  discoverable ;  and  their  allowance  of 
provision  is  going  on  as  if  nothing  ailed  them."  Runaways  were 
occasional.  Of  one  of  them  Washington  directed:  "Let  Abram 
get  his  deserts  when  taken,  by  way  of  example ;  but  do  not  trust 
Crow  to  give  it  to  him,  for  I  have  reason  to  believe  he  is  swayed 
more  by  passion  than  by  judgment  in  all  his  corrections."  Of 
another,  whom  he  had  previously  described  as  an  idler  beyond 
hope  of  correction:  "Nor  is  it  worth  while,  except  for  the  sake 
of  example,  .  .  .  to  be  at  much  trouble,  or  any  expence  over 
a  trifle,  to  hunt  him  up."  Of  a  third,  who  was  thought  to  have 
escaped  in  company  with  a  neighbor's  slave:  "If  Mr.  Dulany 
is  disposed  to  pursue  any  measure  for  the  purpose  of  recovering 
his  man,  I  will  join  him  in  the  expence  so  far  as  it  may  respect 
Paul;  but  I  would  not  have  my  name  appear  in  any  adver- 


286  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

tisement,  or  other  measure,  leading  to  it."  Again,  when  asking 
that  a  woman  of  his  who  had  fled  to  New  Hampshire  be  seized 
and  sent  back  if  it  could  be  done  without  exciting  a  mob :  "How- 
ever well  disposed  I  might  be  to  gradual  abolition,  or  even  to  an 
entire  emancipation  of  that  description  of  people  (if  the  latter 
was  in  itself  practicable),  at  this  moment  it  would  neither  be 
politic  nor  just  to  reward  unfaithfulness  with  a  premature  pref- 
erence, and  thereby  discontent  beforehand  the  minds  of  all  her 
fellow  serv'ts  who,  by  their  steady  attachment,  are  far-  more 
deserving  than  herself  of  favor.""  Finally:  "The  running  off 
of  my  cook  has  been  a  most  inconvenient  thing  to  this  family, 
and  what  rendered  it  more  disagreeable  is  that  I  had  resolved 
never  to  become  the  master  of  another  slave  by  purchase.  But 
this  resolution  I  fear  I  must  break.  I  have  endeavored  to  hire, 
black  or  white,  but  am  not  yet  supplied."  As  to  provisions,  the 
slaves  were  given  fish  from  Washington's  Potomac  fishery  while 
the  supply  lasted,  "meat,  fat  and  other  things  .  .  .  now  and 
then,"  and  of  meal  "as  much  as  they  can  eat  without  waste,  and 
no  more."  The  housing  and  clothing  appear  to  have  been  ade- 
quate. The  "father  of  his  country"  displayed  little  tenderness 
for  his  slaves.  He  was  doubtless  just,  so  far  as  a  business-like 
absentee  master  could  be ;  but  his  only  generosity  to  them  seems 
to  have  been  the  provision  in  his  will  for  their  manumission  after 
the  death  of  his  wife. 

Lesser  men  felt  the  same  stresses  in  plantation  management. 
An  owner  of  ninety-six  slaves  told  Olmsted  that  such  was  the 
trouble  and  annoyance  his  negroes  caused  him,  in  spite  of  his 
having  an  overseer,  and  such  the  loneliness  of  his  isolated  life, 
that  he  was  torn  between  a  desire  to  sell  out  at  once  and  a 
temptation  to  hold  on  for  a  while  in  the  expectation  of  higher 
prices.  At  the  home  of  another  Virginian,  Olmsted  wrote  :  "Dur- 
ing three  hours  or  more  in  which  I  was  in  company  with  the 
proprietor  I  do  not  think  there  were  ten  '^rr.secutive  minutes 
uninterrupted  by  some  of  the  slaves  requiring  his  personal  di- 
rection or  assistance.  He  was  even  obliged  three  times  to  leave 
the  dinner  table.    'You  see,'  said  he  smiling,  as  he  came  in  the 


"Marion  G.  McDougall,  Fugitive  Slaves  (Boston,  1891),  p.  36. 


i 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT  287 

last  time,  'a  farmer's  life  in  this  country  is  no  sinecure.'  "  A 
third  Virginian,  endorsing  Olmsted's  observations,  wrote  that 
a  planter's  cares  and  troubles  were  endless;  the  slaves,  men, 
women  and  children,  infirm  and  aged,  had  wants  innumerable; 
some  were  indolent,  some  obstinate,  some  fractious,  and  each 
class  required  different  treatment.  With  the  daily  wants  of 
food,  clothing  and  the  like,  "the  poor  man's  time  and  thoughts, 
indeed  every  faculty  of  mind,  must  be  exercised  on  behalf  of 
those  who  have  no  minds  of  their  own."^* 

Harriet  Martineau  wrote  on  her  tour  of  the  South :  "Nothing 
struck  me  more  than  the  patience  of  slave-owners  .  .  .  with 
their  slaves.  .  .  .  When  I  considered  how  they  love  to  be 
called  'fiery  Southerners,'  I  could  not  but  marvel  at  their  mild 
forbearance  under  the  hourly  provocations  to  which  they  are 
liable  in  their  homes.  Persons  from  New  England,  France  or 
England,  becoming  slave-holders,  are  found  to  be  the  most  se- 
vere masters  and  mistresses,  however  good  their  tempers  may 
always  have  appeared  previously.  They  cannot,  like  the  native 
proprietor,  sit  waiting  half  an  hour  for  the  second  course,  or 
see  everything  done  in  the  worst  possible  manner,  their  rooms 
dirty,  their  property  wasted,  their  plans  frustrated,  their  infants 
slighted, — themselves  deluded  by  artifices — they  cannot,  like  the 
native  proprietor,  endure  all  this  unruffled."  ^^  It  is  clear  from 
every  sort  of  evidence,  if  evidence  were  needed,  that  life  among 
negro  slaves  and  the  successful  management  of  them  promoted, 
and  wellnigh  necessitated,  a  blending  of  foresight  and  firmness 
with  kindliness  and  patience.  The  lack  of  the  former  qualities 
was  likely  to  bring  financial  ruin ;  the  lack  of  the  latter  would 
make  life  not  worth  living;  the  possession  of  all  meant  a  tolera- 
tion of  slackness  in  every  concern  not  vital  to  routine.  A 
plantation  was  a  bed  of  roses  only  if  the  thorns  were  turned 
aside.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  who  like  Olmsted,  Hall,  Miss 
Martineau  and  most  other  travelers,  was  hostile  to  slavery, 
wrote  after  a  journey  to  Charleston  in  1855 :  "The  change 
to  a  Northerner  in  coming  South  is  always  a  great  one  when 

"F.  L.  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  pp.  44,  58,  718. 

"Harriet  Martineau,  Society  in  America  (London,  1837),  II,  315,  316. 


I 


288  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

he  steps  over  the  boundary  of  the  free  states;  and  the  farther 
you  go  towards  the  South  the  more  absolutely  do  shiftlessness 
and  careless  indifference  take  the  place  of  energy  and  active 
precaution  and  skilful  management.  .  .  .  The  outside  first 
aspect  of  slavery  has  nothing  horrible  and  repulsive  about  it.  • 
The  slaves  do  not  go  about  looking  unhappy,  and  are  with 
difficulty,  I  fancy,  persuaded  to  feel  so.  Whips  and  chains, 
oaths  and  brutality,  are  as  common,  for  all  that  one  sees,  in 
the  free  as  the  slave  states.  We  have  come  thus  far,  and  might 
have  gone  ten  times  as  far,  I  dare  say,  without  seeing  the  first 
sign  of  negro  misery  or  white  tyranny."^"  If,  indeed,  the  neat- 
ness of  aspect  be  the  test  of  success,  most  plantations  were 
failures ;  if  the  test  of  failure  be  the  lack  of  harmony  and  good 
will,  it  appears  from  the  available  evidence  that  most  plan- 
tations were  successful. 

The  concerns  and  the  character  of  a  high-grade  planter  may 
be  gathered  from  the  correspondence  of  John  B.  Lamar,  who 
with  headquarters  in  the  town  of  Macon  administered  half  a 
dozen  plantations  belonging  to  himself  and  his  kinsmen  scat- 
tered through  central  and  southwestern  Georgia  and  northern 
Florida.^^  The  scale  of  his  operations  at  the  middle  of  the  , 
nineteenth  century  may  be  seen  from  one  of  his  orders  for  summer  1 
cloth,  presumably  at  the  rate  of  about  five  yards  per  slave.  This 
was  to  be  shipped  from  Savannah  to  the  several  plantations 
as  follows :  to  Hurricane,  the  property  of  Howell  Cobb,  Lamar's 
brother-in-law,  760  yards;  to  Letohatchee,  a  trust  estate  in 
Florida  belonging  to  the  Lamar  family,  500  yards ;  and  to  Lamar's 
own  plantations  the  following:  Swift  Creek,  486;  Harris  Place, 
360;  Domine,  340;  and  Spring  Branch,  229.  Of  his  course  of 
life  Lamar  wrote:  "I  am  one  half  the  year  rattling  over  rough 
roads  with  Dr.  Physic  and  Henry,  stopping  at  farm  houses  in  * 
the  country,  scolding  overseers  in  half  a  dozen  counties  and 
two  states,  Florida  and  Georgia,  and  the  other  half  in  the 
largest  cities  of  the  Union,  or  those  of  Europe,  living  on  dainties 

•'Diaries  Eliot  Norton,  Letters   (Boston,  1913),  I,  121.  1 

"  Lamar's  MSS.  are  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  A.  S.  Erwm,  Athens,  Ga.   I 

Selections  from  them  are  printed  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  167-183, 

309-312,  II,  38,  41. 


I 


PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT,  289 

and  riding  on  rail-cars  and  steamboats.  When  I  first  emerge 
from  Swift  Creek  into  the  hotels  and  shops  on  Broadway  of  a 
summer,  I  am  the  most  economical  body  that  you  can  imagine. 
The  fine  clothes  and  expensive  habits  of  the  people  strike  me 
forcibly.  ...  In  a  week  I  become  used  to  everything,  and 
in  a  month  I  forget  my  humble  concern  on  Swift  Creek  and 
feel  as  much  a  nabob  as  any  of  them.  ...  At  home  where 
everything  is  plain  and  comfortable  we  look  on  anything  beyond 
that  point  as  extravagant.  When  abroad  where  things  are  on 
a  greater  scale,  our  ideas  keep  pace  with  them.  I  always  find 
such  to  be  my  case;  and  if  I  live  to  a  hundred  I  reckon  it  will 
always  be  so." 

Lamar  could  command  strong  words,  as  when  a  physician 
demanded  five  hundred  dollars  for  services  at  Hurricane  in 
1844,  or  when  overseers  were  detected  in  drunkenness  or  cruelty; 
but  his  most  characteristic  complaints  were  of  his  own  short- 
comings as  a  manager  and  of  the  crotchets  of  his  relatives.  His 
letters  were  always  cheery,  and  his  repeated  disappointments  in 
overseers  never  damped  his  optimism  concerning  each  new  in- 
cumbent. His  old  lands  contented  him  until  he  found  new  and 
more  fertile  ones  to  buy,  whereupon  his  jubilation  was  great. 
When  cotton  was  low  he  called  himself  a  toad  under  the  har- 
row ;  but  rising  markets  would  set  him  to  counting  bales  before 
the  seed  had  more  than  sprouted  and  to  building  new  plan- 
tations in  the  air.  In  actual  practice  his  log-cabin  slave  quarters 
gave  place  to  frame  houses ;  his  mules  were  kept  in  full  force ; 
his  production  of  corn  and  bacon  was  nearly  always  ample  for 
the  needs  of  each  place;  his  slaves  were  permitted  to  raise 
nankeen  cotton  on  their  private  accounts ;  and  his  own  frequent 
journeys  of  inspection  and  stimulus,  as  he  said,  kept  up  an 
esprit  du  corps.  When  an  overseer  reported  that  his  slaves 
were  down  with  fever  by  the  dozen  and  his  cotton  wasting  in 
the  fields,  Lamar  would  hasten  thither  with  a  physician  and  a 
squad  of  slaves  impressed  from  another  plantation,  to  care  for 
the  sick  and  the  crop  respectively.  He  redistributed  slaves 
among  his  plantations  with  a  view  to  a  better  balancing  of 
land  and  labor,  but  was  deterred  from  carrving  this  policy  as 


290  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

far  as  he  thought  might  be  profitable  by  his  unwillingness  to 
separate  the  families.  His  absence  gave  occasion  sometimes  for 
discontent  among  his  slaves ;  yet  when  the  owners  of  others 
who  WE  re  for  sale  authorized  them  to  find  their  own  pur- 
chasers his  well  known  justice,  liberality  and  good  nature  made. 
"Mas  John"  a  favorite  recourse. 

As  to  crops  and  management,  Lamar  indicated  his  methods 
in  criticizing  those  of  a  relative:  "Uncle  Jesse  still  builds  air 
castles  and  blinds  himself  to  his  affairs.  Last  year  he  tinkered 
away  on  tobacco  and  sugar  cane,  things  he  knew  nothing  about. 
.  .  .  He  interferes  with  the  arrangements  of  his  overseers, 
and  has  no  judgment  of  his  own.  ...  If  he  would  employ 
a  competent  overseer  and  move  off  the  plantation  with  his  fam- 
ily he  could  make  good  crops,  as  he  has  a  good  force  of  hands 
and  good  lands.  .  »  .  I  have  found  that  it  is  unprofitable 
to  undertake  anything  on  a  plantation  out  of  the  regular  rou- 
tine. If  I  had  a  little  place  off  to  itself,  and  my  business  would 
admit  of  it,  I  should  delight  in  agricultural  experiments."  In 
his  reliance  upon  staple  routine,  as  in  every  other  character- 
istic, Lamar  rings  true  to  the  planter  type. 


CHAPTER  XV 
PLANTATION  LABOR 

WHILE  produced  only  in  America,  the  plantation  slave 
was  a  product  of  old-world  forces.  His  nature  was  an 
African's  profoundly  modified  but  hardly  transformed 
by  the  requirements  of  European  civilization.  The  wrench  from 
Africa  and  the  subjection  to  the  new  discipline  while  uprooting  his 
ancient  language  and  customs  had  little  more  effect  upon  his  tem- 
perament than  upon  his  complexion.  Ceasing  to  be  Foulah,  Coro- 
mantee,  Ebo  or  Angola,  he  became  instead  the  American  negro. 
I  The  Caucasian  was  also  changed  by  the  contact  in  a  far  from 
negligible  degree ;  but  the  negro's  conversion  was  much  the  more 
thorough,  partly  because  the  process  in  his  case  was  coercive, 
partly  because  his  genius  was  imitative. 

The  planters  had  a  saying,  always  of  course  with  an  implicit 
reservation  as  to  limits,  that  a  negro  was  what  a  white  man 
made  him.  The  molding,  however,  was  accomplished  more  by 
groups  than  by  individuals.  The  purposes  and  policies  of  the 
masters  were  fairly  uniform,  and  in  consequence  the  negroes, 
though  with  many  variants,  became  largely  standardized  into 
the  predominant  plantation  type.  The  traits  which  prevailed 
were  an  eagerness  for  society,  music  and  merriment,  a  fondness 
for  display  whether  of  person,  dress,  vocabulary  or  emotion, 
a  not  flagrant  sensuality,  a  receptiveness  toward  any  religion 
whose  exercises  were  exhilarating,  a  proneness  to  superstition,  a 
courteous  acceptance  of  subordination,  an  avidity  for  praise,  a 
readiness  for  loyalty  of  a  feudal  sort,  and  last  but  not  least, 
a  healthy  human  repugnance  toward  overwork.  "It  don't  do  no 
good  to  hurry,"  was  a  negro  saying,  '"caze  you're  liable  to  run 
by  mo'n  you  overtake."  Likewise  painstaking  was  reckoned  pain- 
ful; and  tomorrow  was  always  waiting  for  today's  work,  while 

291 


292  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

today  was  ready  for  tomorrow's  share  of  play.  On  the  other 
hand  it  was  a  satisfaction  to  work  sturdily  for  a  hard  boss,  and 
so  be  able  to  say  in  an  interchange  of  amenities :  "Go  long, 
half-priced  nigger!  You  wouldn't  fotch  fifty  dollars,  an'  I'm 
wuth  a  thousand  !"^ 

Contrasts  were  abundant.  John  B.  Lamar,  on  the  one  hand, 
wrote:  "My  man  Ned  the  carpenter  is  idle  or  nearly  so  at 
the  plantation.  He  is  fixing  gates  and,  like  the  idle  groom  in 
Pickwick,  trying  to  fool  himself  into  the  belief  that  he  is 
doing  something.  .  .  .  He  is  an  eye  servant.  If  I  was 
with  him  I  could  have  the  work  done  soon  and  cheap;  but  I 
am  afraid  to  trust  him  off  where  there  is  no  one  he  fears."^  On 
the  other  hand,  M,  W.  Philips  inscribed  a  page  of  his  plantation 
diary  as  follows:' 

Sunday 

July  ID,  1853 

Peyton  is  no  more 

Aged  42 

Though  he  was  a  bad  man  in  many  respects 

yet  he  was  a  most  excellent  field 

hand,  always  at  his 

post. 

On  this  place  for  21  years. 

Except  the  measles  and  its  sequence,  the 

injury  rec'd  by  the  mule  last  Nov'r  and  its  sequence, 

he  has  not  lost  15  days'  work,  I  verily  believe,  in  the 

remaining  19  years.    I  wish  we  could  hope  for  his 

eternal  state. 

Should  anyone  in  the  twentieth  century  wish  to  see  the  old- 
fashioned  prime  negro  at  his  best,  let  him  take  a  Mississippi 
steamboat  and  watch  the  roustabouts  at  work — those  chaffing  and 
chattering,  singing  and  swinging,  lusty  and  willing  freight  han- 
dlers, whom  a  river  captain  plying  out  of  New  Orleans  has; 
called  the  noblest  black  men  that  God  ever  made.*     Ready  at 

*  Daily  Tropic  (New  Orleans),  May  18,  1846. 
"  Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  38. 
'  Mississippi  Historical  Society  Publications,  X,  444. 

*  Captain  L.  V.  Cooley,  Address  Before  the  Tulane  Society  of  Econont'^ 
ics.  New  Orleans,  April  nth,  1911,  on  River  Transportation  and  Its  Rela- 
tion to  New  Orleans,  Past,  Present  and  Future.    [New  Orleans,  191 1.] 


PLANTATION  LABOR  293 

every  touching  of  the  shore  day  and  night,  resting  and  sleeping 
only  between  landings,  they  carry  their  loads  almost  at  run- 
ning speed,  and  when  returning  for  fresh  burdens  they  "coon- 
jine"  by  flinging  their  feet  in  semi-circles  at  every  step,  or  cut- 
ting other  capers  in  rhythm  to  show  their  fellows  and  the  gallery 
that  the  strain  of  the  cotton  bales,  the  grain  sacks,  the  oil  barrels 
and  the  timbers  merely  loosen  their  muscles  and  lighten  their 
spirits. 

Such  an  exhibit  would  have  been  the  despair  of  the  average 
ante-bellum  planter,  for  instead  of  choosing  among  hundreds  of 
applicants  and  rejecting  or  discharging  those  who  fell  short  of 
a  high  standard,  he  had  to  make  shift  with  such  laborers  as 
the  slave  traders  chanced  to  bring  or  as  his  women  chanced 
to  rear.  His  common  problem  was  to  get  such  income  and 
comfort  as  he  might  from  a  parcel  of  the  general  run;  and  the 
creation  of  roustabout  energy  among  them  would  require  such 
vigor  and  such  iron  resolution  on  his  own  part  as  was  forth- 
coming in  extremely  few  cases. 

Theoretically  the  master  might  be  expected  perhaps  to  expend 
the  minimum  possible  to  keep  his  slaves  in  strength,  to  discard 
the  weaklings  and  the  aged,  to  drive  his  gang  early  and  late,  to 
scourge  the  laggards  hourly,  to  secure  the  whole  with  fetters 
by  day  and  with  bolts  by  night,  and  to  keep  them  in  perpetual 
terror  of  his  wrath.  But  Olmsted,  who  seems  to  have  gone 
South  with  the  thought  of  finding  some  such  theory  in  applica- 
tion, wrote:  "I  saw  much  more  of  what  I  had  not  anticipated 
and  less  of  what  I  had  in  the  slave  states  than,  with  a  some- 
what extended  travelling  experience,  in  any  other  country  I 
ever  visited" ;  ^  and  Nehemiah  Adams,  who  went  from  Boston  to 
Georgia  prepared  to  weep  with  the  slaves  who  wept,  found  him- 
self laughing  with  the  laughing  ones  instead.^ 

The  theory  of  rigid  coercion  and  complete  exploitation  was 

as   strange  to  the  bulk  of   the   planters   as   the   doctrine   and 

practice  of  moderation  was  to  those  who  viewed  the   regime 

from  afar  and  with  the  mind's  eye.    A  planter  in  explaining  his 

'  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  179. 

"Nehemiah  Adams,  A  Southside  View  of  Slavery,  or  Three  Months 
in  the  South  in  1834  (Boston,  1854),  chap.  2. 


294  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY      > 

mildness  might  well  have  said  it  was  due  to  his  being  neither  a 
knave  nor  a  fool.  He  refrained  from  the  use  of  fetters  not 
so  much  because  they  would  have  hampered  the  slaves  in  their 
work  as  because  the  general  use  of  them  never  crossed  his 
mind.  And  since  chains  and  bolts  were  out  of  the  question, 
the  whole  system  of  control  must  be  moderate;  slaves  must 
be  impelled  as  little  as  possible  by  fear,  and  as  much  as  might 
be  by  loyalty,  pride  and  the  prospect  of  reward. 

Here  and  there  a  planter  applied  this  policy  in  an  excep- 
tional degree.  A  certain  Z.  Kingsley  followed  it  with  marked 
success  even  when  his  whole  force  was  of  fresh  Africans.  In  a 
pamphlet  of  the  late  eighteen-twenties  he  told  of  his  method  as 
follows :  "About  twenty-five  years  ago  I  settled  a  plantation 
on  St.  John's  River  in  Florida  with  about  fifty  new  negroes, 
many  of  whom  I  brought  from  the  Coast  myself.  They  were 
mostly  fine  young  men  and  women,  and  nearly  in  equal  num- 
bers. I  never  interfered  in  their  connubial  concerns  nor  do- 
mestic affairs,  but  let  them  regulate  these  after  their  own 
manner.  I  taught  them  nothing  but  what  was  useful,  and 
what  I  thought  would  add  to  their  physical  and  moral  happi- 
ness. I  encouraged  as  much  as  possible  dancing,  merriment 
and  dress,  for  which  Saturday  afternoon  and  night  and  Sunday 
morning  were  dedicated.  [Part  of  their  leisure]  was  usually 
employed  in  hoeing  their  corn  and  getting  a  supply  of  fish  for 
the  week.  Both  men  and  women  were  very  industrious.  Many 
of  them  made  twenty  bushels  of  corn  to  sell,  and  they  vied  with 
each  other  in  dress  and  dancing.  .  .  .  They  were  perfectly 
honest  and  obedient,  and  appeared  perfectly  happy,  having  no 
fear  but  that  of  offending  me;  and  I  hardly  ever  had  to  apply 
other  correction  than  shaming  them.  If  I  exceeded  this,  the 
punishment  was  quite  light,  for  they  hardly  ever  failed  in  doing 
their  work  well.  My  object  was  to  excite  their  ambition  and 
attachment  by  kindness,  not  to  depress  their  spirits  by  fear 
a'nd  punishment.  .  .  .  Perfect  confidence,  friendship  and 
good  understanding  reigned  between  us."  During  the  War  of 
1812  most  of  these  negroes  were  killed  or  carried  off  in  a  Seminole 
raid.     When  peace  returned  and  Kingsley  attempted  to  restore 


PLANTATION  LABOR  295 

his  Eden  with  a  mixture  of  African  and  American  negroes,  a 
serpent  entered  in  the  guise  of  a  negro  preacher  who  taught 
the  sinfulness  of  dancing,  fishing  on  Sunday  and  eating  the 
catfish  which  had  no  scales.  In  consequence  the  slaves  "became 
poor,  ragged,  hungry  and  disconsolate.  To  steal  from  me  was 
only  to  do  justice — to  take  what  belonged  to  them,  because  I 
kept  them  in  unjust  bondage."  They  came  to  believe  "that  all 
pastime  or  pleasure  in  this  iniquitous  world  was  sinful ;  that  this 
was  only  a  place  of  sorrow  and  repentance,  and  the  sooner  they 
were  out  of  it  the  better;  that  they  would  then  go  to  a  good 
country  where  they  would  experience  no  want  of  anything,  and 
have  no  work  nor  cruel  taskmaster,  for  that  God  was  merciful 
and  would  pardon  any  sin  they  committed;  only  it  was  neces- 
sary to  pray  and  ask  forgiveness,  and  have  prayer  meetings  and 
contribute  what  they  could  to  the  church,  etc.  .  .  .  Finally 
myself  and  the  overseer  became  completely  divested  of  all  au- 
thority over  the  negroes.  .  .  .  Severity  had  no  effect;  it 
only  made  it  worse."'^ 

This  experience  left  Kingsley  undaunted  in  his  belief  that 
liberalism  and  profit-sharing  were  the  soundest  basis  for  the 
plantation  regime.  To  support  this  contention  further  he  cited 
an  experiment  by  a  South  Carolinian  who  estabhshed  four  or 
five  plantations  in  a  group  on  Broad  River,  with  a  slave  fore- 
man on  each  and  a  single  overseer  with  very  limited  functions 
over  the  whole.  The  cotton  crop  was  the  master's,  while  the 
hogs,  corn  and  other  produce  belonged  to  the  slaves  for  their 
sustenance  and  the  sale  of  any  surplus.  The  output  proved 
large,  "and  the  owner  had  no  further  trouble  nor  expense  than 
furnishing  the  ordinary  clothing  and  paying  the  overseer's  wages, 
so  that  he  could  fairly  be  called  free,  seeing  that  he  could  realize 
his  annual  income  wherever  he  chose  to  reside,  without  paying 
the  customary  homage  to  servitude  of  personal  attendance  on 
the  operation  of  his  slaves."  In  Kingsley's  opinion  the  system 
"answered  extremely  well,  and  offers  to  us  a  strong  case  in 

*  [Z.  Kingsley]  A  'treatise  on  the  Patriarchal  System  of  Society  as  It 
exists  .  .  .  under  the'  Name  of  Slavery.  By  an  inhabitant  of  Florida. 
Fourth  edition  (1834, ,  pp.  21,  22.    (Copy  in  the  Library  of  Congress.) 


296  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

favor  of  exciting  ambition  by  cultivating  utility,  local  attach- 
ment and  moral  improvement  among  the  slaves."' 

The  most  thoroughgoing  application  on  record  of  self-govern- 
ment by  slaves  is  probably  that  of  the  brothers  Joseph  and 
Jefferson  Davis  on  their  plantations,  Hurricane  and  Brierfield,  in 
Warren  County,  Mississippi.  There  the  slaves  were  not  only 
encouraged  to  earn  money  for  themselves  in  every  way  they 
might,  but  the  discipline  of  the  plantations  was  vested  in  courts 
composed  wholly  of  slaves,  proceeding  formally  and  imposing 
penalties  to  be  inflicted  by  slave  constables  except  when  the 
master  intervened  with  his  power  of  pardon.  The  regime  was 
maintained  for  a  number  of  years  in  full  effect  until  in  1862 
when  the  district  was  invaded  by  Federal  troops.* 

These  several  instances  were  of  course  exceptional,  and  they 
merely  tend  to  counterbalance  the  examples  of  systematic  sever- 
ity at  the  other  extreme.  In  general,  though  compulsion  was 
always  available  in  last  resort,  the  relation  of  planter  and  slave 
was  largely  shaped  by  a  sense  of  propriety,  proportion  and  co- 
operation. 

As  to  food,  clothing  and  shelter,  a  few  concrete  items  will 
reinforce  the  indications  in  the  preceding  chapters  that  crude 
comfort  was  the  rule.  Bartram  the  naturalist  observed  in  1776 
that  a  Georgia  slaveholder  with  whom  he  stopped  sold  no  dairy 
products  from  his  forty  cows  in  milk.  The  proprietor  ex- 
plained this  by  saying:  "I  have  a  considerable  family  of  black 
people  who  though  they  are  slaves  must  be  fed  and  cared  for. 
Those  I  have  were  either  chosen  for  their  good  qualities  or 
born  in  the  family ;  and  I  find  from  long  experience  and  observa- 
tion that  the  better  they  are  fed,  clothed  and  treated,  the  more 
service  and  profit  we  may  expect  to  derive  from  their  labour. 
In  short,  I  find  my  stock  produces  no  more  milk,  or  any  article 
of  food  or  nourishment,  than  what  is  expended  to  the  best 
advantage  amongst  my  family  and  slaves,"  At  another  place 
Bartram  noted  the  arrival  at  a  plantation  of  horse  loads  of 

[Z.  Kingsley]  Treatise,  p.  22. 
•  W.  L.  Fleming,  "Jefferson  Davis,  the  Negroes  aii    the  Negro  Problem," 
in  the  Sewanee  Review  (October,  1908). 


PLANTATION  LABOR  297 

wild  pigeons  taken  by  torchlight  from  their  roosts  in  a  neigh- 
boring swamp.^" 

On  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney's  two  plantations  on  the 
South  Carolina  coast,  as  appears  from  his  diary  of  1818,  a 
detail  of  four  slaves  was  shifted  from  the  field  work  each  week 
for  a  useful  holiday  in  angling  for  the  huge  drumfish  which 
abounded  in  those  waters;  and  their  catches  augmented  the 
fare  of  the  white  and  black  families  alike.^^  Game  and  fish,  how- 
ever, were  extras.  The  staple  meat  was  bacon,  which  combined 
the  virtues  of  easy  production,  ready  curing  and  constant  savori- 
ness.  On  Fowler's  "Prairie"  plantation,  where  the  field  hands 
numbered  a  little  less  than  half  a  hundred,  the  pork  harvest 
throughout  the  eighteen-fifties,  except  for  a  single  year  of  hog 
cholera,  yielded  from  eleven  to  twenty-three  hundred  pounds ; 
and  when  the  yield  was  less  than  the  normal,  northwestern, 
bacon  or  barreled  pork  made  up  the  deficit^^ 

In  the  matter  of  clothing,  James  Habersham  sent  an  order 
to  London  in  1764  on  behalf  of  himself  and  two  neighbors  for 
120  men's  jackets  and  breeches  and  80  women's  gowns  to  be 
made  in  assorted  sizes  from  strong  and  heavy  cloth.  The  pur- 
pose was  to  clothe  their  slaves  "a  little  better  than  common"  and 
to  save  the  trouble  of  making  the  garments  at  home.^'  In  Janu- 
ary, 1835,  the  overseer  of  one  of  the  Telfair  plantations  re- 
ported that  the  woolen  weaving  had  nearly  supplied  the  full 
needs  of  the  place  at  the  rate  of  six  or  six  and  a  half  yards 
for  each  adult  and  proportionately  for  the  children.^*  In  1847, 
in  preparation  for  winter,  Charles  Manigault  wrote  from  Paris 
to  his  overseer:  "I  wish  you  to  count  noses  among  the  negroes 
and  see  how  many  jackets  and  trousers  you  want  for  the  men  at 
Gowrie,  .  .  .  and  then  write  to  Messrs.  Matthiessen  and  Co. 
of  Charleston  to  send  them  to  you,  together  with  the  same 
quantity  of  twilled  red  flannel  shirts,  and  a  large  woolen  Scotch 
cap  for  each  man  and  youth  on  the  place.     .     .     .     Send  back 

*"  William  Bartram,  Travels  (London,  1792),  pp.  307-310,  467,  468. 

^Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  203-208. 

"  MS.  records  in  the  possession  of  W.  H.  Stovall,  Stovall,  Miss. 

^Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  293,  294. 

^*  Ibid.,  192,  193. 


298  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

anything  which  is  not  first  rate.  You  will  get  from  Messrs. 
Habersham  and  Son  the  twilled  wool  and  cotton,  called  by  some 
'Hazzard's  cloth,'  for  all  the  women  and  children,  and  get  two 
or  three  dozen  handkerchiefs  so  as  to  give  each  woman  and  girl 
one.  .  .  .  The  shoes  you  will  procure  as  usual  from  Mr. 
Habersham  by  sending  down  the  measures  in  time."^^  Finally, 
the  register  of  A.  L.  Alexander's  plantation  in  the  Georgia  Pied- 
mont contains  record  of  the  distributions  from  185 1  to  1864  on  a 
steady  schedule,  f  Every  spring  each  man  drew  two  cotton  shirts 
and  two  pair  of  homespun  woolen  trousers,  each  woman  a  frock 
and  chemises,  and  each  child  clothing  or  cloth  in  proportion ;  and 
every  fall  the  men  drew  shirts,  trousers  and  coats,  the  women 
shifts,  petticoats,  frocks  and  sacks,  the  children  again  on  a  sim- 
ilar scale,  and  the  several  families  blankets  as  needed.^* 

As  for  housing,  the  vestiges  of  the  old  slave  quarters,  some 
of  which  have  stood  abandoned  for  half  a  century,  denote  in 
many  cases  a  sounder  construction^  and  greater  comfort  than 
most  of  the  negroes  in  freedom  have  since  been  able  to  com- 
mand. 

With  physical  comforts  provided,  the  birth-rate  would  take 
care  of  itself.  The  pickaninnies  were  winsome,  and  their  pa- 
rents, free  of  expense  and  anxiety  for  their  sustenance,  could 
hardly  have  more  of  them  than  they  wanted.  A  Virginian  told 
Olmsted,  "he  never  heard  of  babies  coming  so  fast  as  they  did 
on  his  plantation ;  it  was  perfectly  surprising"  ;^'^  and  in  Georgia, 
Howell  Cobb's  negroes  increased  "like  rabbits,"^'  In  Mississippi 
M.  W.  Philips'  woman  Amy  had  borne  eleven  children  when 
at  the  age  of  thirty  she  was  married  by  her  master  to  a  new 
husband,  and  had  eight  more  thereafter,  including  a  set  of  trip- 
lets.^^  But  the  culminating  instance  is  the  following  as  reported 
by  a  newspaper  at  Lynchburg,  Virginia :  "VERY  REMARK- 
ABLE. There  is  now  living  in  the  vicinity  of  Campbell  a  negro 
woman  belonging  to  a  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Todd;  this 

**  MS.  copy  in  Manigault's  letter  book. 

"MS.  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  J.  F.  Minis,  Savannah,  Ga. 

"  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  57, 

**  Plantation  and  Frontier,  I,  179. 

"  Mississippi  Historical  Society  Publications,  X,  439,  443,  447,  480. 


PLANTATION  LABOR  299 

woman  is  in  her  forty-second  year  and  has  had  forty-one  chil- 
dren and  at  this  time  is  pregnant  with  her  forty-second  child, 
and  possibly  with  her  forty-third,  as  she  has  frequently 
had  doublets."^"  Had  childbearing  been  regulated  in  the  interest 
of  the  masters,  Todd's  woman  would  have  had  less  than  forty- 
one  and  Amy  less  than  her  nineteen,  for  such  excesses  impaired 
the  vitality  of  the  children.  Most  of  Amy's,  for  example,  died 
a  few  hours  or  days  after  birth. 

A  normal  record  is  that  of  Fowler's  plantation,  the  "Prairie." 
Virtually  all  of  the  adult  slaves  were  paired  as  husbands  and 
wives  except  Caroline  who  in  twenty  years  bore  ten  children. 
Her  husband  was  presumably  the  slave  of  some  other  master. 
Tom  and  Milly  had  nine  children  in  eighteen  years ;  Harry  and 
Jainy  had  seven  in  twenty-two  years ;  Fanny  had  five  in  seventeen 
years  with  Ben  as  the  father  of  all  but  the  first  born;  Louisa 
likewise  had  five  in  nineteen  years  with  Bob  as  the  father  of 
all  but  the  first;  and  Hector  and  Mary  had  five  in  seven  years. 
On  the  other  hand,  two  old  couples  and  one  in  their  thirties  had 
had  no  children,  while  eight  young  pairs  had  from  one  to  four 
each."  A  lighter  schedule  was  recorded  on  a  Louisiana  planta- 
tion called  Bayou  Cotonier,  belonging  to  E.  Tanneret,  a  Creole. 
The  slaves  listed  in  1859  as  being  fifteen  years  old  and  upwards 
comprised  thirty-six  males  and  thirty-seven  females.  The  "livre 
des  naissances"  showed  fifty-six  births  between  1833  and  1859, 
distributed  among  twenty-three  women,  two  of  whom  were  still 
in  their  teens  when  the  record  ended.  Rhode  bore  six  children  be- 
tween her  seventeenth  and  thirty- fourth  years ;  Henriette  bore  six 
between  twenty-one  and  forty;  Esther  six  between  twenty-one 
and  thirty-six ;  Fanny,  four  between  twenty-five  and  thirty-two ; 
Annette,  four  between  thirty-three  and  forty;  and  the  rest  bore 
from  one  to  three  children  each,  including  Celestine  who  had  her 
first  baby  when  fifteen  and  her  second  two  years  after.  None  of 
the  matings  or  paternities  appear  in  the  record,  though  the  chris- 
tenings and  the  slave  godparents  are  registered.^^ 

*^ Louisiana  Gazette  (New  Orleans),  June  11,  1822,  quoting  the  Lynch- 
burg Press. 

"-  MS.  in  the  possession  of  W.  H.  Stovall,  Stovall.  Miss. 
"MS.  iji  the  Howard  Memorial  Library,  New  Orleans. 


300  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

The  death  rate  was  a  subject  of  more  active  solicitude.  This 
may  be  illustrated  from  the  journal  for  1859-1860  of  the  Magno- 
lia plantation,  forty  miles  below  New  Orleans.  Along  with  its 
record  of  rations  to  138  hands,  and  of  the  occasional  births, 
deaths,  runaways  and  recaptures,  and  of  the  purchase  of  a  man 
slave  for  $2300,  it  contains  the  following  summary  under  date 
of  October  4,  i860:  f"We  have  had  during  the  past  eighteen 
months  over  150  cases  of  measles  and  numerous  cases  of  whoop- 
ing cough,  and  then  the  diphtheria,  all  of  which  we  have  "gone 
through  with  but  little  loss  save  in  the  whooping  cough  when  we 
lost  some  twelve  children."!  This  entry  was  in  the  spirit  of  re- 
joicing at  escape  from  disasters.  But  on  December  18  there  were 
two  items  of  another  tone.  One  of  these  was  entered  by  an 
overseer  named  Kellett:  "[I]  shot  the  negro  boy  Frank  for 
attempting  to  cut  at  me  and  three  boys  with  his  cane  knife  with 
intent  to  kill."  The  other,  in  a  different  handwriting,  recorded 
tersely:  "J-  -^-  Randall  commenst  buisnass  this  mornung.  J. 
Kellett  discharged  this  morning."  The  owner  could  not  afford 
to  keep  an  overseer  who  killed  negroes  even  though  it  might  be 
in  self  defence. ^^ 

Of  epidemics,  yellow  fever  was  of  minor  concern  as  regards 
the  slaves,  for  negroes  were  largely  immune  to  it;  but  cholera 
sometimes  threatened  to  exterminate  the  slaves  and  bankrupt 
their  masters.  After  a  visitation  of  this  in  and  about  New  Or- 
leans in  1832,  John  McDonogh  wrote  to  a  friend:  "All  that  you 
have  seen  of  yellow  fever  was  nothing  in  comparison.  It  is 
supposed  that  five  or  six  thousand  souls,  black  and  white,  were 
carried  off  in  fourteen  days."^*  The  pecuniary  loss  in  Louisiana 
from  slave  deaths  in  that  epidemic  was  estimated  at 
four  million  dollars. ^^  Two  years  afterward  it  raged 
in  the  Savannah  neighborhood.  On  Mr.  Wightman's  plantation, 
ten  miles  above  the  city,  there  were  in  the  first  week  of  Sep- 
tember fifty-three  cases  and  eighteen  deaths.    The  overseer  then 

"  MS.  preserved  on  the  plantation,  owned  by  ex-Governor  H.  C.  War- 
moth. 

'*  William  Allen,  Life  of  John  McDonogh  (Baltimore,  1886),  p.  54. 
""Niles'  Register,  XLV,  84. 


PLANTATION  LABOR  301 

checked  the  spread  by  isolating  the  afflicted  ones  in  the  church, 
the  barn  and  the  mill.  The  neighboring  planters  awaited  only 
the  first  appearance  of  the  disease  on  their  places  to  abandon 
their  crops  and  hurry  their  slaves  to  lodges  in  the  wilderness. ^^ 
Plagues  of  smallpox  were  sometimes  of  similar  dimensions. 

Even  without  pestilence,  deaths  might  bring  a  planter's  ruin. 
A  series  of  them  drove  M.  W,  Philips  to  exclaim  in  his  planta- 
tion journal:  "Oh!  my  losses  almost  make  me  crazy.  God  alone 
can  help."  In  short,  planters  must  guard  their  slaves'  health  and 
life  as  among  the  most  vital  of  their  own  interests ;  for  while 
crops  were  merely  income,  slaves  were  capital.  The  tendency 
appears  to  have  been  common,  indeed,  to  employ  free  immigrant 
labor  when  available  for  such  work  as  would  involve  strain  and 
exposure.  The  documents  bearing  on  this  theme  are  scattering 
but  convincing.  Thus  E.  J.  Forstall  when  writing  in  1845  of  the 
extension  of  the  sugar  fields,  said  thousands  of  Irishmen  were 
seen  in  every  direction  digging  plantation  ditches  ;^^  T,  B.  Thorpe 
when  describing  plantation  life  on  the  Alississippi  in  1853  said 
the  Irish  proved  the  best  ditchers  f^  and  a  Georgia  planter  when 
describing  his  drainage  of  a  swamp  in  1855  said  that  Irish  were 
hired  for  the  work  in  order  that  the  slaves  might  continue  at 
their  usual  routine.^^  Olmsted  noted  on  the  Virginia  seaboard 
that  "Mr.  W.  .  .  .  had  an  Irish  gang  draining  for  him  by  con- 
tract." Olmsted  asked,  "why  he  should  employ  Irishmen  in  pref- 
erence to  doing  the  work  with  his  own  hands.  Tt's  dangerous 
work,'  the  planter  replied,  'and  a  negro's  life  is  too  valuable  to  be 
risked  at  it.  If  a  negro  dies,  it  is  a  considerable  loss  you 
know.*  "^°  On  a  Louisiana  plantation  W.  H.  Russell  wrote  in 
i860:  "The  labor  of  ditching,  trenching,  cleaning  the  waste 
lands  and  hewing  down  the  forests  is  generally  done  by  Irish 
laborers  who  travel  about  the  country  under  contractors  or  are 
engaged  by  resident  gangsmen  for  the  task.  Mr.  Seal  lamented 
the  high  prices  of  this  work;  but  then,  as  he  said,  'It  was  much 

''''Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  Sept.  14  and  17  and  Oct.  22,  1834. 
"Edward  J.  Forstall,  The  Agricultural  Productioiis  of  Louisiana  (New 
Orleans,  1845). 

'^Harper's  Magazine,  VII,  755.- 

"  DeBow's  Review,  XI,  401. 

**  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  pp.  90,  91. 


302  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

better  to  have  Irish  do  it,  who  cost  nothing  to  the  planter  if 
they  died,  than  to  use  up  good  field-hands  in  such  severe  em- 
ployment/ "  Russell  added  on  his  own  score :  "There  is  a 
wonderful  mine  of  truth  in  this  observation.  Heaven  knows  how 
many  poor  Hibernians  have  been  consumed  and  buried  in  these 
Louisianian  swamps,  leaving  their  earnings  to  the  dramshop 
keeper  and  the  contractor,  and  the  results  of  their  toil  to  the 
planter."  On  another  plantation  the  same  traveller  was  shown 
the  debris  left  by  the  last  Irish  gang  and  was  regaled  by  an 
account  of  the  methods  by  which  their  contractor  made  them 
work.^^  Robert  Russell  made  a  similar  observation  on  a  plan- 
tation near  New  Orleans,  and  was  told  that  even  at  high  wages 
Irish  laborers  were  advisable  for  the  work  because  they  would  do 
twice  as  much  ditching  as  would  an  equal  number  of  negroes  in[i 
the  same  time.^^  Furthermore,  A.  de  Puy  Van  Buren,  noted  as  a 
common  sight  in  the  Yazoo  district,  "especially  in  the  ditching 
season,  wandering  'exiles  of  Erin,'  straggling  along  the  road"; 
and  remarked  also  that  the  Irish  were  the  chief  element  among 
the  straining  roustabouts,  on  the  steamboats  of  that  day.^^  Like- 
wise Olmsted  noted  on  the  Alabama  River  that  in  lading  his 
boat  with  cotton  from  a  towering  blufif,  a  slave  squad  was  ap- 
pointed for  the  work  at  the  top  of  the  chute,  while  Irish  deck 
hands  were  kept  below  to  capture  the  wildly  bounding  bales  and 
stow  them.  As  to  the  reason  for  this  division  of  labor  and 
concentration  of  risk,  the  traveller  had  his  own  surmise  con- 
firmed when  the  captain  answered  his  question  by  saying,  "The 
niggers  are  worth  too  much  to  be  risked  here;  if  the  Paddies  are 
knocked  overboard,  or  get  their  backs  broke,  nobody  loses  any- 
thing!"^* To  these  chance  observations  it  may  be  added  that 
many  newspaper  items  and  canal  and  railroad  company  reports 
from  the  'thirties  to  the  'fifties  record  that  the  construction  gangs 
were  largely  of  Irish  and  Germans.     The  pay  attracted  those 

"W.  H.  Russell,  My  Diary  North  and  South  (Boston,  1863),  pp  272, 
273,  278. 

^^  Robert  Russell,  North  America,  Its  Agriculture  and  Cltwate  (Edin- 
burgh, 1857),  p.  272. 

'^A.  de  Puy  Van  Buren,  Jottittgs  of  a  Year's  Sojourn  in  the  South 
(Battle  Creek,  Mich.,  1859),  pp.  84,  318. 

■^  Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slavfi  States,  pp.  550,  551, 


PLANTATION  LABOR  303 

whose  labor  was  their  life ;  the  risk  repelled  those  whose  labor 
was  their  capital.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  planters  cher- 
ished the  lives  of  their  slaves. 

Truancy  was  a  problem  in  somewhat  the  same  class  with  dis- 
ease, disability  and  death,  since  for  industrial  purposes  a  slave 
absent  was  no  better  than  a  slave  sick,  and  a  permanent  escape 
was  the  equivalent  of  a  death  on  the  plantation.  The  character 
of  the  absconding  was  various.  Some  slaves  merely  took  vaca- 
tions without  leave,  some  fled  in  postponement  of  threatened 
punishments,  and  most  of  the  rest  made  resolute  efforts  to 
escape  from  bondage  altogether. 

Occasionally,  however,  a  squad  would  strike  in  a  body  as  a 
protest  against  severities.  An  episode  of  this  sort  was  recounted 
in  a  letter  of  a  Georgia  overseer  to  his  absent  employer :  "Sir : 
I  write  you  a  few  lines  in  order  to  let  you  know  that  six  of 
your  hands  has  left  the  plantation — every  man  but  Jack.  They 
displeased  me  with  their  worke  and  I  give  some  of  them  a  few 
lashes,  Tom  with  the  rest.  On  Wednesday  morning  they  were 
missing.  I  think  they  are  lying  out  until  they  can  see  you  or 
your  uncle  Jack,  as  he  is  expected  daily.  They  may  be  gone 
off,  or  they  may  be  lying  round  in  this  neighbourhood,  but  I 
don't  know.  I  blame  Tom  for  the  whole.  I  don't  think  the  rest 
would  of  left  the  plantation  if  Tom  had  not  of  persuaded  them 
of  for  some  design.  I  give  Tom  but  a  few  licks,  but  if  I  ever 
I  get  him  in  my  power  I  will  have  satisfaction.  There  was  a 
part  of  them  had  no  cause  for  leaving,  only  they  thought  if  they 
.  would  all  go  it  would  injure  me  moore.  They  are  as  independent 
a  set  for  running  of  as  I  have  ever  seen,  and  I  think  the  cause 
is  they  have  been  treated  too  well.  They  want  more  whipping 
and  no  protecter ;  but  if  our  country  is  so  that  negroes  can  quit 
j  their  homes  and  run  of  when  they  please  without  being  taken 
i  they  will  have  the  advantage  of  us.  If  they  should  come  in  I 
will  write  to  you  immediately  and  let  you  know."  ^"^ 

Such  a  case  is  analogous  to  that  of  wage-earning  laborers 

""Letter  of  I.  E.  H.  Harvey,  Jefferson  County,  Georgia,  April  16,  1837, 
to  H.  C.  Flournoy,  Athens,  Ga.  MS.  in  private  possession.  Punctuation 
and  capitals,  which  are  conspicuously  absent  in  the  original,  have  here 
been  supplied  for  the  sake  of  clarity. 


304  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

on  strike  for  better  conditions  of  work.  The  slaves  could  not 
negotiate  directly  at  such  a  time,  but  while  they  lay  in  the  woods 
they  might  make  overtures  to  the  overseer  through  slaves  on  a 
neighboring  plantation  as  to  terms  upon  which  they  would 
return  to  work,  or  they  might  await  their  master's  posthaste 
arrival  and  appeal  to  him  for  a  redress  of  grievances.  Humble 
as  their  demeanor  might  be,  their  power  of  renewing  the  pres- 
sure by  repeating  their  flight  could  not  be  ignored.  A  happy 
ending  for  all  concerned  might  be  reached  by  mutual  conces- 
sions and  pledges.  That  the  conclusion  might  be  tragic  is  illus- 
trated in  a  Louisiana  instance  where  the  plantation  was  in  charge 
of  a  negro  foreman.  Eight  slaves  after  lying  out  for  some 
weeks  because  of  his  cruelty  and  finding  their  hardships  in  the 
swamp  intolerable  returned  home  together  and  proposed  to  go 
to  work  again  if  granted  amnesty.  When  the  foreman  prom- 
ised a  multitude  of  lashes  instead,  they  killed  him  with  their 
clubs.  The  eight  then  proceeded  to  the  parish  jail  at  Vidalia, 
told  what  they  had  done,  and  surrendered  themselves.  The 
coroner  went  to  the  plantation  and  found  the  foreman  dead 
according  to  specifications.^®  The  further  history  of  the  eight 
is  unknown. 

Most  of  the  runaways  went  singly,  but  some  of  them  went 
often.  Such  chronic  offenders  were  likely  to  be  given  exemplary 
punishment  when  recaptured.  In  the  earlier  decades  branding 
and  shackling  were  fairly  frequent.  Some  of  the  punishments 
were  unquestionably  barbarous,  the  more  so  when  inflicted  upon 
talented  and  sensitive  mulattoes  and  quadroons  who  might  be 
quite  as  fit  for  freedom  as  their  masters.  In  the  later  period 
the  more  common  resorts  were  to  whipping,  and  particularly  to 
sale.  The  menace  of  this  last  was  shrewdly  used  by  making  a 
bogey  man  of  the  trader  and  a  reputed  hell  on  earth  of  any 
district  whither  he  was  supposed  to  carry  his  merchandise.  "They 
are  taking  her  to  Georgia  for  to  wear  her  life  away"  was  a  slave 
refrain  welcome  to  the  ears  of  masters  outside  that  state;  and 
the  slanderous  imputation  gave  no  offence  even  to  Georgians, 
for  they  recognized  that  the  intention  was  benevolent,  and  they 

"Daily  Delta  (New  Orleans),  April  17,  1849. 


PLANTATION  LABOR  305 

were  in  turn  blackening  the  reputations  of  the  more  westerly- 
states  in  the  amiable  purpose  of  keeping  their  own  slaves  con- 
tent. 

Virtually  all  the  plantations  whose  records  are  available  suf- 
fered more  or  less  from  truancy,  and  the  abundance  of  news- 
paper advertisements  for  fugitives  reinforces  the  impression  that 
the  need  of  deterrence  was  vital.  Whippings,  instead  of  proving 
a  cure,  might  bring  revenge  in  the  form  of  sabotage,  arson  or 
murder.  Adequacy  in  food,  clothing  and  shelter  might  prove 
of  no  avail,  for  contentment  must  be  mental  as  well  as  physical. 
The  preventives  mainly  relied  upon  were  holidays,  gifts  and 
festivities  to  create  lightness  of  heart;  overtime  and  overtask 
payments  to  promote  zeal  and  satisfaction ;  kindliness  and  care 
to  call  forth  loyalty  in  return ;  and  the  special  device  of  crop 
patches  to  give  every  hand  a  stake  in  the  plantation.  This  last 
raised  a  minor  problem  of  its  own,  for  if  slaves  were  allowed 
to  raise  and  sell  the  plantation  staples,  pilfering  might  be  stim- 
ulated more  than  industry  and  punishments  become  more  nec- 
essary than  before.  In  the  cotton  belt  a  solution  was  found  at 
last  in  nankeen  cotton.^^  This  variety  had  been  widely  grown  foi 
domestic  use  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
but  it  was  left  largely  in  neglect  until  when  in  the  thirties  it  was 
hit  upon  for  negro  crops.  While  the  prices  it  brought  were 
about  the  same  as  those  of  the  standard  upland  staple,  its  dis- 
tinctive brown  color  prevented  the  admixture  of  the  planter's 
own  white  variety  without  certain  detection  when  it  reached  the 
gin.  The  scale  which  the  slave  crops  attained  on  some  planta- 
tions is  indicated  by  the  proceeds  of  $1,969.65  in  1859  from  the 
nankeen  of  the  negroes  on  the  estate  of  Allen  McWalker  in 
Taylor  County,  Georgia.^^  Such  returns  might  be  distributed 
in  cash ;  but  planters  generally  preferred  for  the  sake  of  sobriety 
that  money  should  not  be  freely  handled  by  the  slaves.  Earnings 
as  well  as  gifts  were  therefore  likely  to  be  issued  in  the  form 
of  tickets  for  merchandise.    David  Ross,  for  example,  addressed 

*' John  Dra5rton,  View  of  South  Carolina  (Charleston,  1802),  p.  128. 
''Macon,   Ga.,   Telegraph,  Feb.  3,   1859,  quoted  in  DeBoit/s  Review, 
XXIX,  362,  note. 


3o6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  following  to  the  firm  of  Allen  and  Ellis  at  Fredericksburg 
in  the  Christmas  season  of  1802 :  "Gentlemen :  Please  to  let 
the  bearer  George  have  ten  dollars  value  in  anything  he  chooses" ; 
and  the  merchants  entered  a  memorandum  that  George  chose 
two  handkerchiefs,  two  hats,  three  and  a  half  yards  of  linen,  a 
pair  of  hose,  and  six  shillings  in  cash.^* 

In  general  the  most  obvious  way  of  preventing  trouble  was  to 
avoid  the  occasion  for  it.  If  tasks  were  complained  of  as  too 
heavy,  the  simplest  recourse  was  to  reduce  the  schedule.  If 
jobs  were  slackly  done,  acquiescence  was  easier  than  correction. 
The  easy-going  and  plausible  disposition  of  the  blacks  conspired 
with  the  heat  of  the  climate  to  soften  the  resolution  of  the  whites 
and  make  them  patient.  Severe  and  unyielding  requirements 
would  keep  everyone  on  edge;  concession  when  accompanied 
with  geniality  and  not  indulged  so  far  as  to  cause  demoralization 
would  make  plantation  life  not  only  tolerable  but  charming. 

In  the  actual  regime  severity  was  clearly  the  exception,  and 
kindliness  the  rule.  The  Englishman  Welby,  for  example,  wrote 
in  1820:  "After  travelling  through  three  slave  states  I  am 
obliged  to  go  back  to  theory  to  raise  any  abhorrence  of  it.  Not 
once  during  the  journey  did  I  witness  an  instance'  of  cruel  treat- 
ment, nor  could  I  discover  anything  to  excite  commiseration  in 
the  faces  or  gait  of  the  people  of  colour.  They  walk,  talk  and 
appear  at  least  as  independent  as  their  masters ;  in  animal  spirits 
they  have  greatly  the  advantage."*"  Basil  Hall  wrote  in  1828: 
"I  have  no  wish,  God  knows!  to  defend  slavery  in  the  abstract; 
.  .  .  but  .  .  .  nothing  during  my  recent  journey  gave  me 
more  satisfaction  than  the  conclusion  to  which  I  was  gradually 
brought  that  the  planters  of  the  Southern  states  of  America, 
generally  speaking,  have  a  sincere  desire  to  manage  their  estates 
with  the  least  possible  severity.  I  do  not  say  that  undue  severity 
is  nowhere  exercised ;  but  the  discipline,  taken  upon  the  aver- 
age, as  far  as  I  could  learn,  is  not  more  strict  than  is  necessary 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  proper  degree  of  authority,  without 
which  the  whole  framework  of  society  in  that  quarter  would  be 

**  MS.  among  the  Allen  and  Ellis  papers  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 
**Adlard  Welby,  Visit  to  North  America  (London,  1821),  reprinted  in 
Thwaites  ed.,  Early  Western  Travels,  XII,  2^ 


PLANTATION  LABOR  307 

blown  to  atoms.""  And  Olmsted  wrote:  'The  only  whipping 
of  slaves  that  I  have  seen  in  Virginia  has  been  of  these  wild, 
lazy  children  as  they  are  being  broke  in  to  work."*^ 

As  to  the  rate  and  character  of  the  work,  Hall  said  that 
in  contrast  with  the  hustle  prevailing  on  the  Northern  farms, 
"in  Carolina  all  mankind  appeared  comparatively  idle."^^  Olm- 
sted, when  citing  a  Virginian's  remark  that  his  negroes  never 
worked  enough  to  tire  themselves,  said  on  his  own  account: 
"This  is  just  what  I  have  thought  when  I  have  seen  slaves  at 
work — they  seem  to  go  through  the  motions  of  labor  without 
putting  strength  into  them.  They  keep  their  powers  in  reserve 
for  their  own  use  at  night,  perhaps."^*  And  Solon  Robinson 
reported  tersely  from  a  rice  plantation  that  the  negroes  plied  their 
hoes  "at  so  slow  a  rate,  the  motion  would  have  given  a  quick- 
working  Yankee  convulsions."^' 

There  was  clearly  no  general  prevalence  of  severity  and  strain 
in  the  regime.  There  was,  furthermore,  little  of  that  curse  of 
impersonality  and  indifference  which  too  commonly  prevails  in 
the  factories  of  the  present-day  world  where  power-driven  ma- 
chinery sets  the  pace,  where  the  employers  have  no  relations 
with  the  employed  outside  of  work  hours,  where  the  proprietors 
indeed  are  scattered  to  the  four  winds,  where  the  directors  con- 
fine their  attention  to  finance,  and  where  the  one  duty  of  the 
superintendent  is  to  procure  a  maximum  output  at  a  minimum 
cost.  No,  the  planters  were  commonly  in  residence,  their  slaves 
were  their  chief  property  to  be  conserved,  and  the  slaves  them- 
selves would  not  permit  indifference  even  if  the  masters  were  so 
disposed.  The  generality  of  the  negroes  insisted  upon  possessing 
and  being  possessed  in  a  cordial  but  respectful  intimacy.  While 
by  no  means  every  plantation  was  an  Arcadia  there  were  many 
on  which  the  industrial  and  racial  relations  deserved  almost  as 
glowing  accounts  as  that  which  the  Englishman  William  Faux 
wrote  in  1819  of  the  "goodly  plantation"  of  the  venerable  Mr. 

"  Basil  Hall.  Travels  in  the  United  States,  III,  227,  228. 

"Olmsted,  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  146. 

"Basil  Hall,  HI,  117. 

**  Seaboard  Slave  States,  p.  91. 

*^  American  Agriculturist,  IX,  93, 


3o8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Mickle  in  the  uplands  of  South  Carolina."  "This  gentleman," 
said  he,  "appears  to  me  to  be  a  rare  example  of  pure  and 
undefiled  religion,  kind  and  gentle  in  manners.  .  .  .  Seeing 
a  swarm,  or  rather  herd,  of  young  negroes  creeping  and  dancing 
about  the  door  and  yard  of  his  mansion,  all  appearing  healthy, 
happy  and  frolicsome  and  withal  fat  and  decently  clothed,  both 
young  and  old,  I  felt  induced  to  praise  the  economy  under  which 
they  lived.  'Aye,'  said  he,  'I  have  many  black  people,  but  I 
have  never  bought  nor  sold  any  in  my  life.  All  that  you  see 
came  to  me  with  my  estate  by  virtue  of  my  father's  will.  They 
are  all,  old  and  young,  true  and  faithful  to  my  interests.  They 
need  no  taskmaster,  no  overseer.  They  will  do  all  and  more 
than  I  expect  them  to  do,  and  I  can  trust  them  with  untold  gold. 
All  the  adults  are  well  instructed,  and  all  are  members  of  Chris- 
tian churches  in  the  neighbourhood ;  and  their  conduct  is  becom- 
ing their  professions.  I  respect  them  as  my  children,  and  they 
look  on  me  as  their  friend  and  father.  Were  they  to  be  taken 
from  me  it  would  be  the  most  unhappy  event  of  their  lives.' 
This  conversation  induced  me  to  view  more  attentively  the  faces 
of  the  adult  slaves;  and  I  was  astonished  at  the  free,  easy,  sober, 
intelligent  and  thoughtful  impression  which  such'  an  economy  as 
Mr.  Mickle's  had  indelibly  made  on  their  countenances." 

"William  Faux,  Memorable  Days  in  America  (London,  1823),  p.  68,  r€ 
printed  in  Thwaites,  ed..  Early  Western  Travels,  XI,  87. 


/ 


CHAPTER  XVI 
PLANTATION  LIFE 

WHEN  Hakluyt  wrote  in  1584  his  Discourse  of  Western 
Planting,  his  theme  was  the  project  of  American  coloni- 
zation; and  when  a  settlement  was  planted  at  James- 
town, at  Boston  or  at  Providence  as  the  case  might  be,  it  was 
called,  regardless  of  the  type,  a  plantation.  This  usage  of  the 
word  in  the  sense  of  a  colony  ended  only  upon  the  rise  of  a  new 
institution  to  which  the  original  name  was  apphed.  The  colonies 
at  large  came  then  to  be  known  as  provinces  or  dominions,  while 
the  sub-colonies,  the  privately  owned  village  estates  which  pre- 
vailed in  the  South,  were  alone  called  plantations.  In  the  Creole 
colonies,  however,  these  were  known  as  habitations — dwelling 
places.  This  etymology  of  the  name  suggests  the  nature  of  the 
thing — an  isolated  place  where  people  in  somewhat  peculiar 
groups  settled  and  worked  and  had  their  being.  The  standard 
community  comprised  a  white  household  in  the  midst  of  several  or 
many  negro  families.  The  one  was  master,  the  many  were  slaves ; 
the  one  was  head,  the  many  were  members ;  the  one  was  teacher, 
the  many  were  pupils. 

The  scheme  of  the  buildings  reflected  the  character  of  the  group. 
The  "big  house,"  as  the  darkies  loved  to  call  it,  might  be  of  any 
type  from  a  double  log  cabin  to  a  colonnaded  mansion  of  many 
handsome  rooms,  and  its  setting  might  range  from  a  bit  of 
primeval  forest  to  an  elaborate  formal  garden.  Most  commonly 
the  house  was  commodious  in  a  rambHng  way,  with  no  pretense 
to  distinction  without  nor  to  luxury  within.  The  two  fairly 
constant  features  were  the  hall  running  the  full  depth  of  the 
house,  and  the  verandah  spanning  the  front.  The  former  by 
day  and  the  latter  at  evening  served  in  all  temperate  seasons  as 
the  receiving  place  for  guests  and  the  gathering  place  for  the 

309 


310  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

household  at  all  its  leisure  times.  The  house  was  likely  to  have 
a  quiet  dignity  of  its  own ;  but  most  of  such  beauty  as  the  home- 
stead possessed  was  contributed  by  the  canopy  of  live-oaks  if  on 
the  rice  or  sugar  coasts,  or  of  oaks,  hickories  or  cedars,  if  in 
the  uplands.  Flanking  the  main  house  in  many  cases  were  an 
office  and  a  lodge,  containing  between  them  the  administrative 
headquarters,  the  schoolroom,  and  the  apartments  for  any  bache- 
lor overflow  whether  tutor,  sons  or  guests.  Behind  the  house 
and  at  a  distance  of  a  rod  or  two  for  the  sake  of  isolating  its 
noise  and  odors,  was  the  kitchen.  Near  this,  unless  a  spring 
were  available,  stood  the  well  with  its  two  buckets  dangling  from 
the  pulley;  and  near  this  in  turn  the  dairy  and  the  group  of 
pots  and  tubs  which  constituted  the  open  air  laundry.  Bounding 
the  back  yard  there  were  the  smoke-house  where  bacon  and 
hams  were  cured,  the  sweet  potato  pit,  the  ice  pit  except  in  the 
southernmost  latitudes  where  no  ice  of  local  origin  was  to  be  had, 
the  carriage  house,  the  poultry  house,  the  pigeon  cote,  and  the 
lodgings  of  the  domestic  servants.  On  plantations  of  small  or 
medium  scale  the  cabins  of  the  field  hands  generally  stood  at  the 
border  of  the  master's  own  premises;  but  on  great  estates, 
particularly  in  the  lowlands,  they  were  likely  to  be  somewhat 
removed,  with  the  overseer's  house,  the  smithy,  and  the  stables, 
corn  cribs  and  wagon  sheds  nearby.  At  other  convenient  spots 
were  the  buildings  for  working  up  the  crops — the  tobacco  house, 
the  threshing  and  pounding  mills,  the  gin  and  press,  or  the  sugar 
house  as  the  respective  staples  required.  The  climate  conduced 
so  strongly  to  out  of  door  life  that  as  a  rule  each  roof  covered 
but  a  single  unit  of  residence,  industry  or  storage. 

The  fields  as  well  as  the  buildings  commonly  radiated  from 
the  planter's  house.  Close  at  hand  were  the  garden,  the  or- 
chards and  the  horse  lot ;  and  behind  them  the  sweet  potato  field, 
the  watermelon  patch  and  the  forage  plots  of  millet,  sorghum 
and  the  like.  Thence  there  stretched  the  fields  of  the  main  crops 
in  a  more  or  less  solid  expanse  according  to  the  local  conditions. 
Where  ditches  or  embankments  were  necessary,  as  for  sugar  and 
rice  fields,  the  high  cost  of  reclamation  promoted  compactness ; 
elsewhere  the  prevailing  cheapness  of  land  promoted  dispersion. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  311 

Throughout  the  uplands,  accordingly,  the  area  in  crops  was  likely 
to  be  broken  by  wood  lots  and  long-term  fallows.  The  scale  of 
tillage  might  range  from  a  few  score  acres  to  a  thousand  or  two ; 
the  expanse  of  unused  land  need  have  no  limit  but  those  of  the 
proprietor's  purse  and  his  speculative  proclivity. 

The  scale  of  the  orchards  was  in  some  degree  a  measure  of 
the  domesticity  prevailing.  On  the  rice  coast  the  unfavorable 
character  of  the  soil  and  the  absenteeism  of  the  planter's  fami- 
lies in  summer  conspired  to  keep  the  fruit  trees  few.  In  the  sugar 
district  oranges  and  figs  were  fairly  plentiful.  But  as  to  both 
quantity  and  variety  in  fruits  the  Piedmont  was  unequaled. 
Figs,  plums,  apples,  pears  and  quinces  were  abundant,  but  the 
peaches  excelled  all  the  rest.  The  many  varieties  of  these  were  in 
two  main  groups,  those  of  clear  stones  and  soft,  luscious  flesh 
for  eating  raw,  and  those  of  clinging  stones  and  firm  flesh  for 
drying,  preserving,  and  making  pies.  From  June  to  September 
every  creature,  hogs  included,  commonly  had  as  many  peaches  as 
he  cared  to  eat ;  and  in  addition  great  quantities  might  be  carried 
to  the  stills.  The  abandoned  fields,  furthermore,  contributed 
dewberries,  blackberries,  wild  strawberries  and  wild  plums  in 
summer,  and  persimmons  in  autumn,  when  the  forest  also 
yielded  its  muscadines,  fox  grapes,  hickory  nuts,  walnuts,  chest- 
nuts and  chinquapins,  and  along  the  Gulf  coast  pecans. 

The  resources  for  edible  game  were  likewise  abundant,  with 
squirrels,  opossums  and  wild  turkeys,  and  even  deer  and  bears 
in  the  woods,  rabbits,  doves  and  quail  in  the  fields,  woodcock  and 
snipe  in  the  swamps  and  marshes,  and  ducks  and  geese  on  the 
streams.  Still  further,  the  creeks  and  rivers  yielded  fi.sh  to  be 
taken  with  hook,  net  or  trap,  as  well  as  terrapin  and  turtles,  and 
the  coastal  waters  added  shrimp,  crabs  and  oysters.  In  most  lo- 
calities it  required  little  time  for  a  household,  slave  or  free,  to 
lay  forest,  field  or  stream  under  tribute. 

The  planter's  own  dietary,  while  mostly  home  grown,  was  elab- 
orate. Beef  and  mutton  were  infrequent  because  the  pastures 
were  poor ;  Irish  potatoes  were  used  only  when  new,  for  they  did 
not  keep  well  in  the  Southern  climate ;  and  wheaten  loaves  were 
seldom  seen  because  hot  breads  were  universally  preferred.    The 


312  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

standard  meats  were  chicken  in  its  many  guises,  ham  and  bacon. 
Wheat  flour  furnished  relays  of  biscuit  and  waffles,  while  corn 
yielded  lye  hominy,  grits,  muffins,  batter  cakes,  spoon  bread,  hoe 
cake  and  pone.  The  gardens  provided  in  season  lettuce,  cucum- 
bers, radishes  and  beets,  mustard  greens  and  turnip  greens,  string 
beans,  snap  beans  and  butter  beans,  asparagus  and  artichokes, 
Irish  potatoes,  squashes,  onions,  carrots,  turnips,  okra,  cabbages 
and  collards.  The  fields  added  green  corn  for  boiling,  roasting, 
stewing  and  frying,  cowpeas  and  black-eyed  peas,  pumpkins  and 
sweet  potatoes,  which  last  were  roasted,  fried  or  candied  for 
variation.  The  people  of  the  rice  coast,  furthermore,  had  a  spe- 
cial fondness  for  their  own  pearly  staple;  and  in  the  sugar  dis- 
trict sirop  de  hatterie  was  deservedly  popular.  The  pickles,  pre- 
serves and  jellies  were  in  variety  and  quantity  limited  only  by 
the  almost  boundless  resources  and  industry  of  the  housewife 
and  her  kitchen  corps.  Several  meats  and  breads  and  relishes 
would  crowd  the  table  simultaneously,  and,  unless  unexpected 
guests  swelled  the  company,  less  would  be  eaten  during  the  meal 
than  would  be  taken  away  at  the  end,  never  to  return.  If  ever 
tables  had  a  habit  of  groaning  it  was  those  of  the  planters.  Fru- 
gality, indeed,  was  reckoned  a  vice  to  be  shunned,  and  somewhat 
justly  so  since  the  vegetables  and  eggs  were  perishable,  the  bread 
and  meat  of  little  cost,  and  the  surplus  from  the  table  found  sure 
disposal  in  the  kitchen  or  the  quarters.  Lucky  was  the  man 
whose  wife  was  the  "big  house"  cook,  for  the  cook  carried  a  bas- 
ket, and  the  basket  was  full  when  she  was  homeward  bound. 

The  fare  of  the  field  hands  was,  of  course,  far  more  simple. 
Hoecake  and  bacon  were  its  basis  and  often  its  whole  content. 
But  in  summer  fruit  and  vegetables  were  frequent ;  there  was  oc- 
casional game  and  fish  at  all  seasons ;  and  the  first  heavy  frost  of 
winter  brought  the  festival  of  hog-killing  time.  While  the 
shoulders,  sides,  hams  and  lard  were  saved,  all  other  parts  of  the 
porkers  were  distributed  for  prompt  consumption.  Spare  ribs 
and  backbone,  jowl  and  feet,  souse  and  sausage,  liver  and  chit- 
terlings greased  every  mouth  on  the  plantation  ;  and  the  crackling- 
bread,  made  of  corn  meal  mixed  with  the  crisp  tidbits  left  from 
the  trying  of  the  lard,  carried  fullness  to  repletion.     Christmas 


PLANTATION  LIFE  313 

and  the  summer  lay-by  brought  recreation,  but  the  hog-killing 
brought  fat  satisfaction.^ 

The  warmth  of  the  cHmate  produced  some  distinctive  customs. 
One  was  the  high  seasoning  of  food  to  stimulate  the  appetite; 
another  was  the  afternoon  siesta  of  summer;  a  third  the  well- 
nigh  constant  leaving  of  doors  ajar  even  in  winter  when  the  roar- 
ing logs  in  the  chimney  merely  took  the  chill  from  the  draughts. 
Indeed  a  door  was  not  often  closed  on  the  plantation  except  those 
of  the  negro  cabins,  whose  inmates  were  hostile  to  night  air,  and 
those  of  the  storerooms.  As  a  rule,  it  was  only  in  the  locks  of 
the  latter  that  keys  were  ever  turned  by  day  or  night. 

The  lives  of  the  whites  and  the  blacks  were  partly  segregate, 
partly  intertwined.  If  any  special  link  were  needed,  the  children 
supplied  it.  The  whites  ones,  hardly  knowing  their  mother"^ 
from  their  mammies  or  their  uncles  by  blood  from  their  "un- 
cles" by  courtesy,  had  the  freedom  of  the  kitchen  and  the  cab- 
ins, and  the  black  ones  were  their  playmates  in  the  shaded  sandy 
yard  the  livelong  day.  Together  they  were  regaled  with  folk- 
lore in  the  quarters,  with  Bible  and  fairy  stories  in  the  "big 
house/'  with  pastry  in  the  kitchen,  with  grapes  at  the  scuppernong 
arbor,  with  melons  at  the  spring  house  and  with  peaches  in  the 
orchard.  The  half-grown  boys  were  likewise  almost  as  undis- 
criminating  among  themselves  as  the  dogs  with  which  they  chased 
rabbits  by  day  and  'possums  by  night.  Indeed,  when  the  fork 
in  the  road  of  life  was  reached,  the  white  youths  found  some- 
thing to  envy  in  the  freedom  of  their  fellows'  feet  from  the 
cramping  weight  of  shoes  and  the  freedom  of  their  minds  from 
the  restraints  of  school.  With  the  approach  of  maturity  came 
routine  and  responsibility  for  the  whites,  routine  alone  for  the 
generality  of  the  blacks.  Some  of  the  males  of  each  race  grew 
into  ruffians,  others  into  gentlemen  in  the  literal  sense,  some  of 

*This  account  of  plantation  homesteads  and  dietary  is  drawn  mainly 
from  the  writer's  own  observations  in  post-bellum  times  in  which,  despite 
the  shifting  of  industrial  arrangements  and  the  decrease  of  wealth,  these 
phases  have  remained  apparent.  Confirmation  may  be  had  in  Philip  Fithian 
Journal  (Princeton,  1900)  ;  A.  de  Puy  Van  Buren,  Jottings  of  a  Year's 
Sojourn  in  the  South  (Battle  Creek,  Mich.,  1859)  ;  Susan  D.  Smedes,  Me- 
morials of  a  Southern  Planter  (Baltimore,  1887)  ;  Mary  B.  Chestnutt,  A 
Diary  from  Dixie  (New  York,  1905)  ;  and  many  other  memoirs  and  trav- 
eller's accounts. 


314  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  females  into  viragoes,  others  into  gentlewomen ;  but  most  of 
both  races  and  sexes  merely  became  plain,  wholesome  folk  of  a 
somewhat  distinctive  plantation  type. 

In  amusements  and  in  religion  the  activities  of  the  whites  and 
blacks  were  both  mingled  and  separate.  Fox  hunts  when  oc- 
curring by  day  were  as  a  rule  diversions  only  for  the  planters 
and  their  sons  and  guests,  but  when  they  occurred  by  moonlight 
the  chase  was  joined  by  the  negroes  on  foot  with  halloos  which 
rivalled  the  music  of  the  hounds.  By  night  also  the  blacks,  with 
the  whites  occasionally  joining  in,  sought  the  canny  'possum  and 
the  embattled  'coon;  in  spare  times  by  day  they  hied  their  curs 
after  the  fleeing  Brer  Rabbit,  or  built  and  baited  seductive  traps 
for  turkeys  and  quail ;  and  fishing  was  available  both  by  day  and 
by  night.  At  the  horse  races  of  the  whites  the  jockeys  and  many 
of  the  spectators  were  negroes ;  while  from  the  cock  fights  and 
even  the  "crap"  games  of  the  blacks,  white  men  and  boys  were  not 
always  absent. 

Festivities  were  somewhat  more  separate  than  sports,  though 
by  no  means  wholly  so.  In  the  gayeties  of  Christmas  the  members 
of  each  race  were  spectators  of  the  dances  and  diversions  of  the 
other.  Likewise  marriage  merriment  in  the  great  house  would 
have  its  echo  in  the  quarters ;  and  sometimes  marriages  among 
the  slaves  were  grouped  so  as  to  give  occasion  for  a  general 
frolic.  Thus  Daniel  R.  Tucker  in  1858  sent  a  general  invitation 
over  the  countryside  in  central  Georgia  to  a  sextuple  wedding 
among  his  slaves,  with  dinner  and  dancing  to  follow.^  On  the 
whole,  the  fiddle,  the  banjo  and  the  bones  were  not  seldom  in 
requisition. 

It  was  a  matter  of  discomfort  that  in  the  evangelical  churches 
dancing  and  religion  were  held  to  be  incompatible.  At  one  time 
on  Thomas  Dabney's  plantation  in  Mississippi,  for  instance,  the 
whole  negro  force  fell  captive  in  a  Baptist  "revival"  and  for- 
swore the  double  shuffle.  "I  done  buss'  my  fiddle  an'  my  banjo, 
and  done  fling  'em  away,"  the  most  music-loving  fellow  on  the 
place  said  to  the  preacher  when  asked  for  his  religious  experi- 

'  Federal  Union  (Milledgeville,  Ga.),  April  20,  1858. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  315 

ences.'  Such  a  condition  might  be  tolerable  so  long  as  it  was 
voluntary;  but  the  planters  were  likely  to  take  precautions 
against  its  becoming  coercive.  James  H.  Hammond,  for  instance, 
penciled  a  memorandum  in  his  plantation  manual:  "Church 
members  are  privileged  to  dance  on  all  holyday  occasions;  and 
the  class-leader  or  deacon  who  may  report  them  shall  be  repri- 
manded or  punished  at  the  discretion  of  the  master."  *  The 
logic  with  which  sin  and  sanctity  were  often  reconciled  is  illus- 
trated in  Irwin  Russell's  remarkably  faithful  "Christmas  in  the 
Quarters."  "Brudder  Brown''  has  advanced  upon  the  crowded 
floor  to  "beg  a  blessin'  on  dis  dance :" 

O  Mashr  !  let  dis  gath'rin'  fin'  a  blessin'  in  yo'  sight ! 

Don't  jedge  us  hard  fur  what  we  does — you  knows  it's  Chrismus 

night; 
An'  all  de  balance  ob  de  yeah  we  does  as  right's  we  kin. 
Ef  dancin's  wrong,  O  Mashr !  let  de  time  excuse  de  sin ! 

We  labors  in  de  vineya'd,  wukin'  hard  and  wukin'  true; 
Now,  shorely  you  won't  notus,  ef  we  eats  a  grape  or  two, 
An'  takes  a  leetle  holiday, — a  leetle  restin'  spell, — 
Bekase,  nex'  week  we'll  start  in  fresh,  an'  labor  twicet  as  well. 

Remember,  Mashr, — min'  dis,  now, — de  sinfulness  ob  sin 
Is  'pendin'  'pon  de  sperrit  what  we  goes  an'  does  it  in; 
An'  in  a  righchis  frame  ob  min'  we's  gwine  to  dance  an'  sing, 
A-feelin'  like  King  David,  when  he  cut  de  pigeon-wing. 

It  seems  to  me — indeed  it  do — I  mebbe  mout  be  wrong — 
That  people  raly  ought  to  dance,  when  Chrismus  comes  along; 
Des  dance  bekase  dey's  happy — like  de  birds  hops  in  de  trees, 
De  pine-top  fiddle  soundin'  to  de  blowin'  ob  de  breeze. 

"We  has  no  ark  to  dance  afore,  like  Isrul's  prophet  king ; 
We  has  no  harp  to  soun'  de  chords,  to  holp  us  out  to  sing; 
But  'cordin'  to  de  gif's  we  has  we  does  de  bes'  we  knows. 
An'  folks  don't  'spise  de  vi'let-flower  bekase  it  ain't  de  rose. 

You  bless  us,  please,  sah,  eben  ef  we's  doin'  wrong  tonight: 
Kase  den  we'll  need  de  blessin'  more'n  ef  we's  doin'  right; 
An'  let  de  blessin'  stay  wid  us,  untel  we  comes  to  die. 
An'  goes  to  keep  our  Chrismus  wid  dem  sheriffs  in  de  sky ! 

'S.  D.  Smedes,  Memorials  of  a  Southern  Planter,  pp.  161,  162. 
*  MS.  among  the  Hammond  papers  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


3i6  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

Yes,  tell  dem  preshis  anjuls  we's  a-gwine  to  jine  'em  soon: 
Our  voices  we's  a-trainin'  fur  to  sing  de  glory  tune ; 
We's  ready  when  you  wants  us,  an'  it  ain't  no  matter  when — 
O  Mashr  !  call  yo'  chillen  soon,  an'  take  'em  home !    Amen.^ 

The  churches  which  had  the  greatest  influence  upon  the  negroes 
were  those  which  relied  least  upon  ritual  and  most  upon  exhilara- 
tion. The  Baptist  and  Methodist  were  foremost,  and  the  latter 
had  the  special  advantage  of  the  chain  of  camp  meetings  which 
extended  throughout  the  inland  regions.  At  each  chosen  spot 
the  planters  and  farmers  of  the  countryside  would  jointly  erect 
a  great  shed  or  "stand"  in  the  midst  of  a  grove,  and  would  sev- 
erally build  wooden  shelters  or  "tents"  in  a  great  square  sur- 
rounding it.  When  the  crops  were  laid  by  in  August,  the  house- 
holds would  remove  thither,  their  wagons  piled  high  with  bed- 
ding, chairs  and  utensils  to  keep  "open  house"  with  heavy-laden 
tables  for  all  who  might  come  to  the  meeting.  With  less  elab' 
orate  equipment  the  negroes  also  would  camp  in  the  neighbor- 
hood and  attend  the  same  service  as  the  whites,  sitting  generally 
in  a  section  of  the  stand  set  apart  for  them.  The  camp  meet- 
ing, in  short,  was  the  chief  social  and  religious  event  of  the  year 
for  all  the  Methodist  whites  and  blacks  within  reach  of  the 
ground  and  for  such  non-Methodists  as  cared  to  attend.  For 
some  of  the  whites  this  occasion  was  highly  festive,  for  others, 
intensely  religious;  but  for  any  negro  it  might  easily  be  both  at 
once.  Preachers  in  relays  delivered  sermons  at  brief  intervals 
from  sunrise  until  after  nightfall ;  and  most  of  the  sermons  were 
followed  by  exhortations  for  sinners  to  advance  to  the  mourners' 
benches  to  receive  the  more  intimate  and  individual  suasion  of 
the  clergy  and  their  corps  of  assisting  brethren  and  sisters.  The 
condition  was  highly  hypnotic,  and  the  professions  of  conversion 
were  often  quite  as  ecstatic  as  the  most  fervid  ministrant  could 
wish.  The  negroes  were  particularly  welcome  to  the  preachers, 
for  they  were  likely  to  give  the  promptest  response  to  the  pul- 
pit's challenge  and  set  the  frenzy  going.  A  Georgia  preacher, 
for  instance,  in  reporting  from  one  of  these  camps  in  1807,  wrote: 
"The  first  day  of  the  meeting,  we  had  a  gentle  and  comfortable 

"Irwin  Russell.  Poems  ("New  York  [1888]),  pp.  $-y. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  317 

moving  of  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  among  us;  and  at  night  it  was 
much  more  powerful  than  before,  and  the  meeting  was  kept  up 
all  night  without  intermission.  However,  before  day  the  white 
people  retired,  and  the  meeting  was  continued  by  the  black  peo- 
ple." It  is  easy  to  see  who  led  the  way  to  the  mourners'  bench. 
"Next  day,"  the  preacher  continued,  "at  ten  o'clock  the  meeting 
was  remarkably  lively,  and  many  souls  were  deeply  wrought 
upon ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  sermon  there  was  a  general  cry  for 
mercy,  and  before  night  there  were  a  good  many  persons  who 
professed  to  get  converted.  That  night  the  meeting  continued 
all  night,  both  by  the  white  and  black  people,  and  many  souls 
were  converted  before  day."  The  next  day  the  stir  was  still 
more  general.  Finally,  "Friday  was  the  greatest  day  of  all.  We 
had  the  Lord's  Supper  at  night,  .  .  .  and  such  a  solemn  time  I 
have  seldom  seen  on  the  like  occasion.  Three  of  the  preachers 
fell  helpless  within  the  altar,  and  one  lay  a  considerable  time  be- 
fore he  came  to  himself.  From  that  the  work  of  convictions  and 
conversions  spread,  and  a  large  number  were  converted  during 
the  night,  and  there  was  no  intermission  until  the  break  of  day. 
At  that  time  many  stout  hearted  sinners  were  conquered.  On 
Saturday  we  had  preaching  at  the  rising  of  the  sun;  and  then 
with  many  tears  we  took  leave  of  each  other."  * 

The  tone  of  the  Baptist  "protracted  meetings"  was  much  like 
that  of  the  Methodist  camps.  In  either  case  the  rampant  emo- 
tionalism, effective  enough  among  the  whites,  was  with  the  ne- 
groes a  perfect  contagion.  With  some  of  these  the  conversion 
brought  lasting  change ;  with  others  it  provided  a  garment  of 
piety  to  be  donned  with  "Sunday-go-to-meeting  clothes"  and 
doffed  as  irksome  on  week  days.  With  yet  more  it  merely  added 
to  the  joys  of  life.  The  thrill  of  exaltation  would  be  followed  by 
pleasurable  "sin,"  to  give  place  to  fresh  conversion  when  the 
furor  season  recurred.  The  rivalry  of  the  Baptist  and  Metho- 
dist churches,  each  striving  by  similar  methods  to  exce.l  the  other, 
tempted  many  to  become  oscillating  proselytes,  yielding  to  the 
allurements  first  of  the  one  and  then  of  the  other,  and  on  each 

'Farmer's  Gazette  (Sparta,  Ga.),  Aug.  8,  1807,  reprinted  in  Plantation 
find  Frontier^  H,  285.  :S6. 


3i8  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

occasion  holding  the  center  of  the  stage  as  a  brand  snatched  from 
the  burning,  a  lost  sheep  restored  to  the  fold,  a  cause  and  partici- 
pant of  rapture. 

In  these  manifestations  the  negroes  merely  followed  and  en- 
larged upon  the  example  of  some  of  the  whites.  The  similarity 
of  practices,  however,  did  not  promote  a  permanent  mingling  of 
the  two  races  in  the  same  congregations,  for  either  would  feel 
some  restraint  upon  its  rhapsody  imposed  by  the  presence  of.  the 
other.  To  relieve  this  1  there  developed  in  greater  or  less  degree 
a  separation  of  the  races  for  purposes  of  worship,  white  minis- 
ters preaching  to  the  blacks  from  time  to  time  in  plantation  mis- 
sions, and  home  talent  among  the  negroes  filling  the  intervals. 
While  some  of  the  black  exhorters  were  viewed  with  suspicion 
by  the  whites,  others  were  highly  esteemed  and  unusually  privi- 
leged. One  of  these  at  Lexington,  Kentucky,  for  example,  was 
given  the  following  pass  duly  signed  by  his  master :  "Tom  is 
my  slave,  and  has  permission  to  go  to  Louisville  for  two  or  three 
weeks  and  return  here  after  he  has  made  his  visit.  Tom  is  a 
preacher  of  the  reformed  Baptist  church,  and  has  always  been  a 
faithful  servant."^  jAs  a  rule  the  greater  the  proportion  of  ne- 
groes in  a  district  or  a  church  connection,  the  greater  the  segre- 
gation in  worship.  If  the  whites  were  many  and  the  negroes 
few,  the  latter  would  be  given  the  gallery  or  some  other  group 
of  pews ;  but  if  the  whites  were  few  and  the  negroes  many,  the 
two  elements  would  probably  worship  in  separate  buildings.''' 
Even  in  such  case,  however,  it  was  very  common  for  a  parcel  of 
black  domestics  to  flock  with  their  masters  rather  than  with  their 
fellows. 

The  general  regime  in  the  fairly  typical  state  of  South  Caro- 
lina was  described  in  1845  in  a  set  of  reports  procured  prelimi- 
nary to  a  convention  on  the  state  of  religion  among  the  negroes 
and  the  means  of  its  betterment.  Some  of  these  accounts  were 
from  the  clergy  of  several  denominations,  others  from  the  laity; 
some  treated  of  general  conditions  in  the  several  districts,  others 

*  Dated  Aug.  6,  1856,  and  signed  E.  McCallister.    MS.  in  the  New  York 

Public  Library. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  319 

in  detail  of  systems  on  the  writers'  own  plantations.  In  the  lat- 
ter group,  N.  W.  Middleton,  an  Episcopalian  of  St.  Andrew's 
parish,  wrote  that  he  and  his  wife  and  sons  were  the  only  re- 
ligious teachers  of  his  slaves,  aside  from  the  rector  of  the  parish. 
He  read  the  service  and  taught  the  catechism  to  all  every  Sunday 
afternoon,  and  taught  such  as  came  voluntarily  to  be  instructed 
after  family  prayers  on  Wednesday  nights.  His  wife  and  sons 
taught  the  children  "constantly  during  the  week,"  chiefly  in  the 
catechism.  On  the  other  hand  R.  F.  W.  Allston,  a  fellow  Epis- 
copalian of  Prince  George,  Winyaw,  had  on  his  plantation  a 
place  of  worship  open  to  all  denominations.  A  Methodist  mis- 
sionary preached  there  on  alternate  Sundays,  and  the  Baptists 
were  less  regularly  cared  for.  Both  of  these  sects,  furthermore, 
had  prayer  meetings,  according  to  the  rules  of  the  plantation,  on 
two  nights  of  each  week.  Thus  while  Middleton  endeavored  to 
school  his  slaves  in  his  own  faith,  Allston  encouraged  them  to 
seek  salvation  by  such  creed  as  they  might  choose. 

An  Episcopal  clergyman  in  the  same  parish  with  Allston  wrote 
that  he  held  fortnightly  services  among  the  negroes  on  ten  plan- 
tations, and  enlisted  some  of  the  literate  slaves  as  lay  readers. 
His  restriction  of  these  to  the  text  of  the  prayer  book,  however, 
seems  to  have  shorn  them  of  power.  The  bulk  of  the  slaves 
flocked  to  the  more  spontaneous  exercises  elsewhere ;  and  the 
clergyman  could  find  ground  for  satisfaction  only  in  saying  that 
frequently  as  many  as  two  hundred  slaves  attended  services  at 
one  of  the  parish  churches  in  the  district. 

The  Episcopal  failure  was  the  "evangelical"  opportunity.  Of 
the  thirteen  thousand  slaves  in  Allston's  parish  some  3200  were 
Methodists  and  1500  Baptists,  as  compared  with  300  Episcopal- 
ians. In  St.  Peter's  parish  a  Methodist  reported  that  in  a  total 
of  6600  slaves,  1335  adhered  to  his  faith,  about  half  of  whom 
were  in  mixed  congregations  of  whites  and  blacks  under  the  care 
of  two'  circuit-riders,  and  the  rest  were  in  charge  of  two  mis- 
sionaries who  ministered  to  negroes  alone.  Every  large  plan- 
tation, furthermore,  had  one  or  more  "so-called  negro  preachers, 
but  more  properly  exhorters."  In  St.  Helena  parish  the  Bap- 
tists led  with  2132  communicants ;  the  Methodists  followed  with 


320  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

314  to  whom  a  missionary  holding  services  on  twenty  planta- 
tions devoted  the  whole  of  his  time;  and  the  Episcopalians  as 
usual  brought  up  the  rear  with  fifty-two  negro  members  of  the 
church  at  Beaufort  and  a  solitary  additional  one  in  the  chapel  on 
St.  Helena  island. 

Of  the  progress  and  effects  of  religion  in  the  lowlands  Allston 
and  Middleton  thought  well.  The  latter  said,  "In  every  respect 
I  feel  encouraged  to  go  on."  The  former  wrote :  "Of  my  own 
negroes  and  those  in  my  immediate  neighborhood  I  may  speak 
with  confidence.  They  are  attentive  to  religious  instruction  and 
greatly  improved  in  intelligence  and  morals,  in  domestic  rela- 
tions, etc.  Those  who  have  grown  up  under  religious  training 
are  more  intelligent  and  generally,  though  not  always,  more  im- 
proved than  those  who  have  received  religious  instruction  as 
adults.  Indeed  the  degree  of  intelligence  which  as  a  class  they 
are  acquiring  is  worthy  of  deep  consideration."  Thomas  Fuller, 
the  reporter  from  the  Beaufort  neighborhood,  however,  was  as 
much  apprehensive  as  hopeful.  While  the  negroes  had  greatly 
improved  in  manners  and  appearance  as  a  result  of  coming  to 
worship  in  town  every  Sunday,  said  he,  the  freedom  which  they 
were  allowed  for  the  purpose  was  often  misused  in  ways  which 
led  to  demoralization.  He  strongly  advised  the  planters  to  keep 
the  slaves  at  home  and  provide  instruction  there. 

From  the  upland  cotton  belt  a  Presbyterian  minister  in  the 
Chester  district  wrote :  "You  are  all  aware,  gentlemen,  that  the 
relation  and  intercourse  between  the  whites  and  the  blacks  in  the 
up-country  are  very  different  from  what  they  are  in  the  low- 
country.  With  us  they  are  neither  so  numerous  nor  kept  so  en- 
tirely separate,  but  constitute  a  part  of  our  households,  and  are 
daily  either  with  their  masters  or  some  member  of  the  white 
family.  From  this  circumstance  they  feel  themselves  more 
identified  with  their  owners  than  they  can  with  you.  I  minister 
steadily  to  two  different  congregations.  More  than  one  hundred 
blacks  attend.  .  .  .  The  gallery,  or  a  quarter  of  the  house,  is  ap- 
propriated to  them  in  all  our  churches,  and  they  enjoy  the 
preached  gospel  in  common  with  the  whites."  Finally,  from  the 
Greenville  district,  on  the  upper  edge  of  the  Piedmont,  where  the 


PLANTATION  LIFE  321 

Methodists  and  Baptists  were  completely  dominant  among  whites 
and  blacks  alike,  it  was  reported:  "About  one  fourth  of  the 
members  in  the  churches  are  negroes.  In  the  years  1832,  '3  and 
'4  great  numbers  of  negroes  joined  the  churches  during  a  period 
of  revival.  Many,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  have  since  been  excom- 
municated. As  the  general  zeal  in  religion  declined,  they  back- 
slid." There  were  a  few  licensed  negro  preachers,  this  writer 
continued,  who  were  thought  to  do  some  good ;  but  the  general 
improvement  in  negro  character,  he  thought,  was  mainly  due  to 
the  religious  and  moral  training  given  by  their  masters,  and  still 
more  largely  by  their  mistresses.  From  all  quarters  the  expres- 
sion was  common  that  the  promotion  of  religion  among  the 
slaves  was  not  only  the  duty  of  masters  but  was  to  their  interest 
as  well  in  that  it  elevated  the  morals  of  the  workmen  and  im- 
proved the  quality  of  the  service  they  rendered.^ 

In  general,  the  less  the  cleavage  of  creed  between  master  and 
man,  the  better  for  both,  since  every  factor  conducing  to  soli- 
darity of  sentiment  was  of  advantage  in  promoting  harmony  and 
progress.  When  the  planter  went  to  sit  under  his  rector  while 
the  slave  stayed  at  home  to  hear  an  exhorter,  just  so  much  was 
lost  in  the  sense  of  fellowship.  It  was  particularly  unfortunate 
that  on  the  rice  coast  the  bulk  of  the  blacks  had  no  co-religion- 
ists except  among  the  non-slaveholding  whites  with  whom  they 
had  more  conflict  than  community  of  economic  and  sentimental 
interest.  On  the  whole,  however,  in  spite  of  the  contrary  sug- 
gestion of  irresponsible  religious  preachments  and  manifesta- 
tions, the  generality  of  the  negroes  everywhere  realized,  like  the 
whites,  that  virtue  was  to  be  acquired  by  consistent  self-control 

'  Proceedings  of  the  Meeting  in  Charleston,  S.  C,  May  13-15,  1845,  on 
the  Religious  Instruction  of  the  Negroes,  together  with  the  Report  of  the 
Committee  and  the  Address  to  the  Public  (Charleston,  1845).  The  re- 
ports of  the  Association  for  the  Religious  Instruction  of  Negroes  in  Lib- 
erty County,  Georgia,  printed  annually  for  a  dozen  years  or  more  in  the 
'thirties  and  'forties,  relate  the  career  of  a  particularly  interesting  mission- 
ary work  in  that  county  on  the  rice  coast,  under  the  charge  of  the  Reverend 
C.  C.  Jones.  The  tenth  report  in  the  series  (1845)  summarizes  the  work 
of  the  first  decade,  and  the  twelfth  (1847)  surveys  the  conditions  then 
prevalent.  In  C.  F.  Deems  ed..  Annals  of  Southern  Methodism  for  1836 
(Nashville,  [1857])  the  ninth  chapter  is  made  up  of  reports  on  the  mission 
activities  of  that  church  among  the  negroes  in  various  quarters  of  the 
South. 


322  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

in  the  performance  of  duty  rather  than  by  the  alternation  of 
spasmodic  reforms  and  relapses. 

Occasionally  some  hard-headed  negro  would  resist  the  hyp- 
notic suggestion  of  his  preacher,  and  even  repudiate  glorification 
on  his  death-bed.  A  Louisiana  physician  recounts  the  final  epi- 
sode in  the  career  of  "Old  Uncle  Caleb,"  who  had  long  been 
a-dying.  "Before  his  departure,  Jeff,  the  negro  preacher  of  the 
place,  gathered  his  sable  flock  of  saints  and  sinners  around  the 
bed.  He  read  a  chapter  and  prayed,  after  which  they  sang  a 
hymn.  .  .  .  Uncle  Caleb  lay  motionless  with  closed  eyes,  and 
gave  no  sign.  Jeff  approached  and  took  his  hand.  'Uncle 
Caleb,'  said  he  earnestly,  *de  doctor  says  you  are  dying;  and  all 
de  bredderin  has  come  in  for  to  see  you  de  last  time.  And  now, 
Uncle  Caleb,  dey  wants  to  hear  from  your  own  mouf  de  precious 
words,  dat  you  feels  prepared  to  meet  your  God,  and  is  ready  and 
willin'  to  go.*  Old  Caleb  opened  his  eyes  suddenly,  and  in  a 
very  peevish,  irritable  tone,  rebuffed  the  pious  functionary  in  the 
following  unexpected  manner:  'Jeff,  don't  talk  your  nonsense 
to  me !  You  jest  knows  dat  I  an't  ready  to  go,  nor  willin'  neder ; 
and  dat  I  an't  prepared  to  meet  nobody.'  Jeff  expatiated  largely 
not  only  on  the  mercy  of  God,  but  on  the  glories  Of  the  heavenly 
kingdom,  as  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  etc.  *Dis  ole 
cabin  suits  me  mon'sus  well!'  was  the  only  reply  he  could  elicit 
from  the  old  reprobate.     And  so  he  died."  ® 

The  slaves  not  only  had  their  own  functionaries  in  mystic  mat- 
ters, including  a  remnant  of  witchcraft,  but  in  various  temporal 
concerns  also.  Foremen,  chosen  by  masters  with  the  necessary 
sanction  of  the  slaves,  had  industrial  and  police  authority ;  nurses 
were  minor  despots  in  sick  rooms  and  plantation  hospitals ;  many 
an  Uncle  Remus  was  an  oracle  in  folklore;  and  many  an  Aunt 
Dinah  was  arbitress  of  style  in  turbans  and  of  elegancies  in  gen- 
eral. Even  in  the  practice  of  medicine  a  negro  here  and  there 
gained  a  sage's  reputation.  The  governor  of  Virginia  reported 
in  1729  that  he  had  "met  with  a  negro,  a  very  old  man,  who  has 
performed  many  wonderful  cures  of  diseases.     For  the  sake  of 

•  William  H.  Holcombe,  "Sketches  of  Plantation  Life,"  in  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine,  LVII,  631  (June,  1861). 


PLANTATION  LIFE  323 

his  freedom  he  has  revealed  the  medicine,  a  concoction  of  roots 
and  barks.  .  .  .  There  is  no  room  to  doubt  of  its  being  a  certain 
remedy  here,  and  of  singular  use  among  the  negroes — it  is  well 
worth  the  price  (i6o)  of  the  negro's  freedom,  since  it  is  now 
known  how  to  cure  slaves  without  mercury."  ^°  And  in  colonial 
South  Carolina  a  slave  named  Caesar  was  particularly  famed  for 
his  cure  for  poison,  which  was  a  decoction  of  plantain,  hoar- 
hound  and  golden  rod  roots  compounded  with  rum  and  lye,  to- 
gether with  an  application  of  tobacco  leaves  soaked  in  rum  in 
case  of  rattlesnake  bite.  In  1750  the  legislature  ordered  his  pre- 
scription published  for  the  benefit  of  the  public,  and  the  Charles- 
ton journal  which  printed  it  found  its  copies  exhausted  by  the 
demand.^^  An  example  of  more  common  episodes  appears  in  a 
letter  from  William  Dawson,  a  Potomac  planter,  to  Robert  Car- 
ter of  Nomoni  Hall,  asking  that  "Brother  Tom,"  Carter's  coach- 
man, be  sent  to  see  a  sick  child  in  his  quarter.  Dawson  contin- 
ued :  "The  black  people  at  this  place  hath  more  faith  in  him  as 
a  doctor  than  any  white  doctor ;  and  as  I  wrote  you  in  a  former 
letter  I  cannot  expect  you  to  lose  your  man's  time,  etc.,  for  noth- 
ing, but  am  quite  willing  to  pay  for  same."  ^^ 

Each  plantation  had  a  double  head  in  the  master  and  the  mis- 
tress. The  latter,  mother  of  a  romping  brood  of  her  own  and 
over-mother  of  the  pickaninny  throng,  was  the  chatelaine  of  the 
whole  establishment.  Working  with  a  never  flagging  constancy, 
she  carried  the  indoor  keys,  directed  the  household  routine  and 
the  various  domestic  industries,  served  as  head  nurse  for  the  sick, 
and  taught  morals  and  religion  by  precept  and  example.  Her 
hours  were  long,  her  diversions  few,  her  voice  quiet,  her  influ- 
ence firm.^^  Her  presence  made  the  plantation  a  home ;  her  ab- 
sence would  have  made  it  a  factory.  The  master's  concern  was 
mainly  with  the  able-bodied  in  the  routine  of  the  crops.  He  laid 
the  plans,  guessed  the  weather,  ordered  the  work,  and  saw  to  its 
performance.     He  was  out  early  and  in  late,  directing,  teaching, 

*"J.  H.  Russell,  The  Free  Negro  in  Virginia  (Baltimore,  1913),  P-  S^» 
note. 

^  South  Carolina  Gazette,  Feb.  25,  1751. 

"MS.  in  the  Carter  papers,  Virginia  Historical  Society. 

**  Emily  J.  Putnam,  The  Lady  (New  York,  1910),  pp.  282-323. 


324  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

encouraging,  and  on  occasion  punishing.  Yet  he  found  time  for 
going  to  town  and  for  visits  here  and  there,  time  for  politics,  and 
time  for  sports.  If  his  duty  as  he  saw  it  was  sometimes  grim, 
and  his  disappointments  keen,  hearty  diversions  were  at  hand  to 
restore  his  equanimity.  His  horn  hung  near  and  his  hounds 
made  quick  response  on  Reynard's  trail,  and  his  neighbors  were 
ready  to  accept  his  invitations  and  give  theirs  lavishly  in  return, 
whether  to  their  houses  or  to  their  fields.  When  their  absences 
from  home  were  long,  as  they  might  well  be  in  the  public  serv- 
ice, they  were  not  unlikely  upon  return  to  meet  such  a  recep- 
tion as  Henry  Laurens  described :  "I  found  nobody  there  but 
three  of  our  old  domestics — Stepney,  Exeter  and  big  Hagar. 
These  drew  tears  from  me  by  their  humble  and  affectionate 
salutes.  My  knees  were  clasped,  my  hands  kissed,  my  very  feet 
embraced,  and  nothing  less  than  a  very — I  can't  say  fair,  but  full 
. — buss  of  my  lips  would  satisfy  the  old  man  weeping  and  sob- 
bing in  my  face.  .  .  .  They  .  .  .  held  my  hands,  hung  upon  me ; 
I  could  scarce  get  from  them.  'Ah,'  said  the  old  man,  T  never 
thought  to  see  you  again ;  now  I  am  happy ;  Ah,  I  never  thought 
to  see  you  again.'  "  ^* 

Among  the  clearest  views  of  plantation  life  extant  are  those 
of  two  Northern  tutors  who  wrote  of  their  Southern  sojourns. 
One  was  Philip  Fithian  who  went  from  Princeton  in  1773  to 
teach  the  children  of  Colonel  Robert  Carter  of  Nomoni  Hall  in 
the  "Northern  Neck"  of  Virginia,  probably  the  most  aristo- 
cratic community  of  the  whole  South :  the  other  was  A.  de  Puy 
Van  Buren  who  left  Battle  Creek  in  the  eighteen-fifties  to  seek 
health  and  employment  in  Mississippi  and  found  them  both,  and 
happiness  too,  amid  the  freshly  settled  folk  on  the  banks  of  the 
Yazoo  River.  Each  of  these  made  jottings  now  and  then  of  the 
work  and  play  of  the  negroes,  but  both  of  them  were  mainly  im- 
pressed by  the  social  regime  in  which  they  found  themselves 
among  the  whites.  Fithian  marveled  at  the  evidences  of  wealth 
and  the  stratification  of  society,  but  he  reckoned  that  a  well 
recommended  Princeton  graduate,  with  no  questions  asked  as  to 
bis  family,  fortune  or  business,  would  be  rated  socially  as  on  an 

"  D.  D.  Wallace,  Life  of  Henry  Laurens^  p.  436. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  325 

equal  footing  with  the  owner  of  a  iio,ooo  estate,  though  this 
might  be  discounted  one-half  if  he  were  unfashionably  ignorant 
of  dancing,  boxing,  fencing,  fiddling  and  cards.^^  He  was  at- 
tracted by  the  buoyancy,  the  good  breeding  and  the  cordiality  of 
those  whom  he  met,  and  particularly  by  the  sound  qualities  of 
Colonel  and  Mrs.  Carter  with  whom  he  dwelt ;  but  as  a  budding 
Presbyterian  preacher  he  was  a  little  shocked  at  first  by  the  easy- 
going conduct  of  the  Episcopalian  planters  on  Sundays.  The 
time  at  church,  he  wrote,  falls  into  three  divisions :  first,  that  be- 
fore service,  which  is  filled  by  the  giving  and  receiving  of  business 
letters,  the  reading  of  advertisements  and  the  discussion  of  crop 
prices  and  the  lineage  and  qualities  of  favorite  horses;  second, 
"in  the  church  at  service,  prayrs  read  over  in  haste,  a  sermon 
seldom  under  and  never  over  twenty  minutes,  but  always  made 
up  of  sound  morality  or  deep,  studied  metaphysicks ;"  ^^  third, 
"after  service  is  over,  three  quarters  of  an  hour  spent  in  strolling 
round  the  church  among  the  crowd,  in  which  time  you  will  be  in- 
vited by  several  different  gentlemen  home  with  them  to  dinner." 

Van  Buren  found  the  towns  in  the  Yazoo  Valley  so  small  as 
barely  to  be  entitled  to  places  on  the  map ;  he  found  the  planters' 
houses  to  be  commonly  mere  log  structures,  as  the  farmers' 
houses  about  his  own  home  in  Michigan  had  been  twenty  years 
before;  and  he  found  the  roads  so  bad  that  the  mule  teams  could 
hardly  draw  their  wagons  nor  the  spans  of  horses  their  chariots 
except  in  dry  weather.  But  when  on  his  horseback  errands  in 
search  of  a  position  he  learned  to  halloo  from  the  roadway  and 
was  regularly  met  at  each  gate  with  an  extended  hand  and  a 
friendly  "How  do  you  do,  sir  ?  Won't  you  alight,  come  in,  take 
a  seat  and  sit  awhile?";  when  he  was  invariably  made  a  mem- 
ber of  any  circle  gathered  on  the  porch  and  refreshed  with  cool 
water  from  the  cocoanut  dipper  or  with  any  other  beverages  in 
circulation;  when  he  was  asked  as  a  matter  of  course  to  share 
any  meal  in  prospect  and  to  spend  the  night  or  day,  he  discovered 
charms  even  in  the  crudities  of  the  pegs  for  hanging  saddles  on 
the  porch  and  the  crevices  between  the  logs  of  the  wall  for  the 

"Philip  V.  Fithian,  Journal  and  Letters  (Princeton,  1900),  p.  287. 
"  Fithian  Journal  and  Letters,  p.  296. 


326  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

keeping  of  pipes  and  tobacco,  books  and  newspapers.  Finally, 
when  the  planter  whose  house  he  had  made  headquarters  for  two 
months  declined  to  accept  a  penny  in  payment,  Van  Buren's  heart 
overflowed.  The  boys  whom  he  then  began  to  teach  he  found 
particularly  apt  in  historical  studies,  and  their  parents  with  whom 
he  dwelt  were  thorough  gentlefolk. 

Toward  the  end  of  his  narrative,  Van  Buren  expressed  the 
thought  that  Mississippi,  the  newly  settled  home  of  people  from 
all  the  older  Southern  states,  exemplified  the  manners  of  all.  He 
was  therefore  prompted  to  generalize  and  interpret:  "A  South- 
ern gentleman  is  composed  of  the  same  material  that  a  Northern 
gentleman  is,  only  it  is  tempered  by  a  Southern  clime  and  mode 
of  life.  And  if  in  this  temperament  there  is  a  little  more  urban- 
ity and  chivalry,  a  little  more  politeness  and  devotion  to  the 
ladies,  a  little  more  snaznter  in  modo,  why  it  is  theirs — be  fair 
and  acknowledge  it,  and  let  them  have  it.  He  is  from  the  mode 
of  life  he  lives,  especially  at  home,  more  or  less  a  cavalier ;  he  in- 
variably goes  a-horseback.  His  boot  is  always  spurred,  and  his 
hand  ensigned  with  the  riding-whip.  Aside  from  this  he  is  known 
by  his  bearing — his  frankness  and  firmness."  Furthermore  he 
is  a  man  of  eminent  leisureliness,  which  Van  Buren  accounts  for 
as  follows:  "Nature  is  unloosed  of  her  stays  there;  she  is  not 
crowded  for  time;  the  word  haste  is  not  in  her  vocabulary.  In 
none  of  the  seasons  is  she  stinted  to  so  short  a  space  to  perform 
her  work  as  at  the  North.  She  has  leisure  enough  to  bud  and 
blossom — to  produce  and  mature  fruit,  and  do  all  her  work. 
While  on  the  other  hand  in  the  North  right  the  reverse  is  true. 
Portions  are  taken  off  the  fall  and  spring  to  lengthen  out  the 
winter,  making  his  reign  nearly  half  the  year.  This  crowds  the 
work  of  the  whole  year,  you  might  say,  into  about  half  of  it. 
This  .  .  .  makes  the  essential  difference  between  a  Northerner 
and  a  Southerner.  They  are  children  of  their  respective  climes ; 
and  this  is  why  Southrons  are  so  indifferent  about  time;  they 
have  three  months  more  of  it  in  a  year  than  we  have."  ^" 

A  key  to  Van  Buren's  enthusiasm  is  given  by  a  passage  in  the 

"  A.  de  Puy  Van  Buren,  Jottings  of  a  Year's  Sojourn  in  the  South,  pp. 
232-236. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  327 

diary  of  the  great  English  reporter,  William  H.  Russell:  *'The 
more  one  sees  of  a  planter's  life  the  greater  is  the  conviction  that 
its  charms  come  from  a  particular  turn  of  mind,  which  is  sepa- 
rated by  a  wide  interval  from  modern  ideas  in  Europe.  The 
planter  is  a  denomadized  Arab ; — he  has  fixed  himself  with  horses 
and  slaves  in  a  fertile  spot,  where  he  guards  his  women  with  Ori- 
ental care,  exercises  patriarchal  sway,  and  is  at  once  fierce,  ten- 
der and  hospitable.  The  inner  life  of  his  household  is  exceed- 
ingly charming,  because  one  is  astonished  to  find  the  graces  and 
accomplishments  of  womanhood  displayed  in  a  scene  which  has 
a  certain  sort  of  savage  rudeness  about  it  after  all,  and  where 
all  kinds  of  incongruous  accidents  are  visible  in  the  service  of  the 
table,  in  the  furniture  of  the  house,  in  its  decorations,  menials, 
and  surrounding  scenery."  ^'  The  Southerners  themselves  took 
its  incongruities  much  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  regime  was 
to  their  minds  so  clearly  the  best  attainable  under  the  circum- 
stances that  its  roughnesses  chafed  little.  The  plantations  were 
homes  to  which,  as  they  were  fond  of  singing,  their  hearts  turned 
ever ;  and  the  negroes,  exasperating  as  they  often  were  to  visiting 
strangers,  were  an  element  in  the  home  itself.  The  problem  of 
accommodation,  which  was  the  central  problem  of  the  life,  was 
on  the  whole  happily  solved. 

The  separate  integration  of  the  slaves  was  no  more  than  rudi- 
mentary. They  were  always  within  the  social  mind  and  con- 
science of  the  whites,  as  the  whites  in  turn  were  within  the  mind 
and  conscience  of  the  blacks.  The  adjustments  and  readjust- 
ments were  mutually  made,  for  although  the  masters  had  by  far 
the  major  power  of  control,  the  slaves  themselves  were  by  no 
means  devoid  of  influence.  A  sagacious  employer  has  well  said, 
after  long  experience,  "a  negro  understands  a  white  man  better 
than  the  white  man  understands  the  negro,"  ^^  This  knowledge 
gave  a  power  all  its  own.  The  general  regime  was  in  fact  shaped 
by  mutual  requirements,  concessions  and  understandings,  pro- 
ducing reciprocal  codes  of  conventional  morality.     Masters  of 

"William  H.  Russell,  My  Diary  North  and  South  (Boston,  1863),  p.  285. 
"  Captain  L.  V.  Cooley,  Address  Before  the  Tulane  Society  of  Econom- 
ics [New  Orleans,  1911],  p.  8. 


328  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

the  standard  type  promoted  Christianity  and  the  customs  of  mar- 
riage and  parental  care,  and  they  instructed  as  much  by  example 
as  by  precept ;  they  gave  occasional  holidays,  rewards  and  indul- 
gences, and  permitted  as  large  a  degree  of  liberty  as  they  thought 
the  slaves  could  be  trusted  not  to  abuse;  they  refrained  from 
selling  slaves  except  under  the  stress  of  circumstances ;  they 
avoided  cruel,  vindictive  and  captious  punishments,  and  endeav- 
ored to  inspire  effort  through  affection  rather  than  through 
fear;  and  they  were  content  with  achieving  quite  moderate  in- 
dustrial results.  In  short  their  despotism,  so  far  as  it  might 
properly  be  so  called,  was  benevolent  in  intent  and  on  the  whole 
beneficial  in  effect. 

Some  planters  there  were  who  inflicted  severe  punishments  for 
disobedience  and  particularly  for  the  offense  of  running  away; 
and  the  community  condoned  and  even  sanctioned  a  certain  de- 
gree of  this.  Otherwise  no  planter  would  have  printed  such  de- 
scriptions of  scars  and  brands  as  were  fairly  common  in  the 
newspaper  advertisements  offering  rewards  for  the  recapture  of 
absconders.^"  When  severity  went  to  an  excess  that  was  reck- 
oned as  positive  cruelty,  however,  the  law  might  be  invoked  if 
white  witnesses  could  be  had;  or  the  white  neighbors  or  the 
slaves  themselves  might  apply  extra-legal  retribution.  The  for- 
mer were  fain  to  be  content  with  inflicting  social  ostracism  or 
with  expelling  the  offender  from  the  district ;  ^^  the  latter  some- 
times went  so  far  as  to  set  fire  to  the  oppressor's  house  or  to  ac- 
complish his  death  by  poison,  cudgel,  knife  or  bullet.^^ 

In  the  typical  group  there  was  occasion  for  terrorism  on  neither 
side.  The  master  was  ruled  by  a  sense  of  dignity,  duty  and 
moderation,  and  the  slaves  by  a  moral  code  of  their  own.  This 
embraced  a  somewhat  obsequious  obedience,  the  avoidance  of 
open  indolence  and  vice,  the  attainment  of  moderate. skill  in  in- 
dustry, and  the  cultivation  of  the  master's  good  will  and  affec- 
tion.    It  winked  at  petty  theft,  loitering  and  other  little  laxities, 

**  Examples  are  reprinted  in  Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  79-91. 
"An  instance  is  given  in  H.  M.  Henry,  Police  Control  of  the  Slave  in 
f^outh  Carolina  (Emory,  Va.,  [1914]),  p.  75. 

"For  instances  see  Plantation  and  Frontier,  II,  117-121. 


PLANTATION  LIFE  329 

while  it  stressed  good  manners  and  a  fine  faithfulness  in  major 
concerns.  While  the  majority  were  notoriously  easy-going,  very 
many  made  their  master's  interests  thoroughly  their  own;  and 
many  of  the  masters  had  perfect  confidence  in  the  loyalty  of  the 
bulk  of  their  servitors.  When  on  the  eve  of  secession  Edmund 
Ruffin  foretold  ^^  the  fidelity  which  the  slaves  actually  showed 
when  the  war  ensued,  he  merely  voiced  the  faith  of  the  planter 
class. 

In  general  the  relations  on  both  sides  were  felt  to  be  based  on 
pleasurable  responsibility.  The  masters  occasionally  expressed 
this  in  their  letters.  William  Allason,  for  example,  who  after  a 
long  career  as  a  merchant  at  Falmouth,  Virginia,  had  retired  to 
plantation  life,  declined  his  niece's  proposal  in  1787  that  he  re- 
turn to  Scotland  to  spend  his  declining  years.  In  enumerating 
his  reasons  he  concluded :  "And  there  is  another  thing  which 
in  your  country  you  can  have  no  trial  of:  that  is,  of  selling  faith- 
ful slaves,  which  perhaps  we  have  raised  from  their  earliest 
breath.  Even  this,  however,  some  can  do,  as  with  horses,  etc., 
but  I  must  own  that  it  is  not  in  my  disposition."  2* 

Others  were  yet  more  expressive  when  they  came  to  write 
their  wills.  Thus  ^^  Howell  Cobb  of  Houston  County,  Georgia, 
when  framing  his  testament  in  1817  which  made  his  body-serv- 
ant "to  be  what  he  is  really  deserving,  a  free  man,"  and  gave  an 
annuity  along  with  virtual  freedom  to  another  slave,  of  an  ad- 
vanced age,  said  that  the  liberation  of  the  rest  of  his  slaves  was 
prevented  by  a  belief  that  the  care  of  generous  and  humane  mas- 
ters would  be  much  better  for  them  than  a  state  of  freedom. 
Accordingly  he  bequeathed  these  to  his  wife  who  he  knew  from 
her  goodness  of  temper  would  treat  them  with  unflagging  kind- 
ness. But  should  the  widow  remarry,  thereby  putting  her  prop- 
erty under  the  control  of  a  stranger,  the  slaves  and  the  planta- 
tion were  at  once  to  revert  to  the  testator's  brother  who  was 
recommended  to  bequeath  them  in  turn  to  his  son  Howell  if  he 

"Debow's  Review,  XXX,  1 18-120  (January,  1861). 

"Letter  dated  Jan.  22,  1787,  in  the  Allason  MS.  mercantile  books,  Vir- 
ginia State  Library. 

**  MS.  copy  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  A.  S.  Erwin,  Athens,  Ga.  The 
nephew  mentioned  in  the  will  was  Howell  Cobb  of  Confederate  promi- 
nence. 


330  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

were  deemed  worthy  of  the  trust.  "It  is  my  most  ardent  desire 
that  in  whatsoever  hands  fortune  may  place  said  negroes,"  the 
will  enjoined,  "that  all  the  justice  and  indulgence  may  be  shown 
them  that  is  consistent  with  a  state  of  slavery.  I  flatter  myself 
with  the  hope  that  none  of  my  relations  or  connections  will  be  so 
ungrateful  to  my  memory  as  to  treat  or  use  them  otherwise." 
Surely  upon  the  death  of  such  a  master  the  slaves  might,  with 
even  more  than  usual  unction,  raise  their  melodious  refrain : 

Down  in  de  cawn  fiel' 

Hear  dat  mo'nful  soun'; 
All  de  darkies  am  aweepin', 

Massa's  in  de  col',  col'  ground. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

PLANTATION  TENDENCIES 

EVERY  typical  settlement  in  English  America  was  in  its 
first  phase  a  bit  of  the  frontier.  Commerce  was  rudi- 
mentary, capital  scant,  and  industry  primitive.  Each 
family  had  to  sufifice  itself  in  the  main  with  its  own  direct  prod- 
uce. No  one  could  afford  to  specialize  his  calling,  for  the  ver- 
satility of  the  individual  was  wellnigh  a  necessity  of  life.  This 
phase  lasted  only  until  some  staple  of  export  was  found  which 
permitted  the  rise  of  external  trade.  Then  the  fruit  of  such 
energy  as  could  be  spared  from  the  works  of  bodily  sustenance 
was  exchanged  for  the  goods  of  the  outer  world ;  and  finally  in 
districts  of  special  favor  for  staples,  the  bulk  of  the  community 
became  absorbed  in  the  special  industry  and  procured  most  of  its 
consumption  goods  from  without. 

In  the  hidden  coves  of  the  Southern  Alleghanies  the  primitive 
regime  has  proved  permanent.  In  New  England  where  it  was 
but  gradually  replaced  through  the  influence  first  of  the  fisheries 
and  then  of  manufacturing,  it  survived  long  enough  to  leave  an 
enduring  spirit  of  versatile  enterprise,  evidenced  in  the  plenitude 
of  "Yankee  notions."  In  the  Southern  lowlands  and  Piedmont, 
however,  the  pristine  advantages  of  self-sufficing  industry  were 
so  soon  eclipsed  by  the  profits  to  be  had  from  tobacco,  rice,  indigo, 
sugar  or  cotton,  that  in  large  degree  the  whole  community 
adopted  a  stereotyped  economy  with  staple  production  as  its 
cardinal  feature.  The  earnings  obtained  by  the  more  efficient 
producers  brought  an  early  accumulation  of  capital,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  peculiar  adaptability  of  all  the  Southern  staples 
to  production  on  a  large  scale  by  unfree  labor  prompted  the  de- 
votion of  most  of  the  capital  to  the  purchase  of  servants  and 
slaves.  Thus  in  every  district  suited  to  any  of  these  staples, 
the  growth  of  an  industrial  and  social  system  like  that  of  Europe 

331 


332  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

and  the  Northern  States  was  cut  short  and  the  distinctive  South- 
em  scheme  of  things  developed  instead. 

This  regime  was  conditioned  by  its  habitat,  its  products  and 
the  racial  quality  of  its  labor  supply,  as  well  as  by  the  institution 
of  slavery  and  the  traditional  predilections  of  the  masters.  The 
climate  of  the  South  was  generally  favorable  to  one  or  an- 
other of  the  staples  except  in  the  elevated  tracts  in  and  about 
the  mountain  ranges.  The  soil  also  was  favorable  except  in  the 
pine  barrens  which  skirted  the  seaboard.  Everywhere  but  in 
the  alluvial  districts,  however,  the  land  had  only  a  surface  fer- 
tility, and  all  the  staples,  as  well  as  their  great  auxiliary  Indian 
corn,  required  the  fields  to  be  kept  clean  and  exposed  to  the 
weather;  and  the  heavy  rainfall  of  the  region  was  prone  to  wash 
off  the  soil  from  the  hillsides  and  to  leach  the  fertile  ingredients 
through  the  sands  of  the  plains.  But  so  spacious  was  the  South- 
ern area  that  the  people  never  lacked  fresh  fields  when  their  old 
ones  were  outworn.  Hence,  while  public  economy  for  the  long 
run  might  well  have  suggested  a  conservation  of  soil  at  the  ex- 
pense of  immediate  crops,  private  economy  for  the  time  being 
dictated  the  opposite  policy ;  and  its  dictation  prevailed,  as  it  has 
done  in  virtually  all  countries  and  all  ages.  Slaves  working  in 
squads  might  spread  manure  and  sow  soihng  crops  if  so  directed, 
as  well  as  freemen  working  individually ;  and  their  failure  to  do 
so  was  fully  paralleled  by  similar  neglect  at  the  North  in  the 
same  period.  New  England,  indeed,  was  only  less  noted  than 
the  South  for  exhausted  fields  and  abandoned  farms.  The  new- 
ness of  the  country,  the  sparseness  of  population  and  the  cheap- 
ness of  land  conspired  with  crops,  climate  and  geological  condi- 
tions to  promote  exploitive  methods.  The  planters  were  by  no 
means  alone  in  shaping  their  program  to  fit  these  circum- 
stances.^ The  heightened  speed  of  the  consequences  was  in  a 
sense  merely  an  unwelcome  proof  of  their  system's  efficiency. 
Their  laborers,  by  reason  of  being  slaves,  must  at  word  of  com- 
mand set  forth  on  a  trek  of  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  miles.     No 

*  Edmund  Ruffin,  Address  on  the  opposite  results  of  exhausting  and 
fertilising  systems  of  agriculture.  Read  before  the  South  Carolina  Insti- 
tute, November  i8,  1852  (Charleston,  1853),  pp.  12,  13. 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  333 

racial  inertia  could  hinder  nor  local  attachments  hold  them.  In 
the  knowledge  of  this  the  masters  were  even  more  alert  than  other 
men  of  the  time  for  advantageous  new  locations ;  and  they  were 
accordingly  fain  to  be  content  with  rude  houses  and  flimsy  fences 
in  any  place  of  sojourn,  and  to  let  their  hills  remain  studded  with 
stumps  as  well  as  to  take  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  as  a  matter 
of  course.^ 

Migration  produced  a  more  or  less  thorough  segregation  of 
types,  for  planters  and  farmers  respectively  tended  to  enter  and 
remain  in  the  districts  most  favorable  to  them.^  The  monopoliza- 
tion of  the  rice  and  sugar  industries  by  the  planters,  has  been  de- 
scribed in  previous  chapters.  At  the  other  extreme  the  farming 
regime  was  without  a  rival  throughout  the  mountain  regions,  in 
the  Shenandoah  and  East  Tennessee  Valleys  and  in  large  parts 
of  Kentucky  and  Missouri  where  the  Southern  staples  would  not 
flourish,  and  in  great  tracts  of  the  pine  barrens  where  the  qual- 
ity of  the  soil  repelled  all  but  the  unambitious.  The  tobacco  and 
cotton  belts  remained  as  the  debatable  ground  in  which  the  two 
systems  might  compete  on  more  nearly  even  terms,  though  in 
some  cotton  districts  the  planters  had  always  an  overwhelming 
advantage.  In  the  Mississippi  bottoms,  for  example,  the  solid 
spread  of  the  fields  facilitated  the  supervision  of  large  gangs  at 
work,  and  the  requirement  of  building  and  maintaining  great 
levees  on  the  river  front  virtually  debarred  operations  by  small 
proprietors.  The  extreme  effects  of  this  are  illustrated  in  Issa- 
quena County,  Mississippi,  and  Concordia  Parish,  Louisiana, 
where  in  i860  the  slaveholdings  averaged  thirty  and  fifty  slaves 
each,  and  where  except  for  plantation  overseers  and  their  fam- 
ilies there  were  virtually  no  non-slaveholders  present.  The  Ala- 
bama prairies,  furthermore,  showed  a  plantation  predominance 
almost  as  complete.  In  the  six  counties  of  Dallas,  Greene, 
Lowndes,  Macon,  Perry,  Sumter  and  Wilcox,  for  example,  the 

"W.  L.  Trenholm,  "The  Southern  States,  their  social  and  industrial 
history,  conditions  and  needs,"  in  the  Journal  of  Social  Science,  no.  IX 
(January,  1878). 

*  F.  V,  Emerson,  "Geographical  Influences  in  American  Slavery,"  in  the 
American  Geographical  Society  Bulletin,  XLIII  (1911),  13-26,  io6-ii8,  170- 
181. 


334  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

average  slaveholdings  ranged  from  seventeen  to  twenty-one  each, 
and  the  slaveholding  famihes  were  from  twice  to  six  times  as 
numerous  as  the  non-slaveholding  ones.  Even  in  the  more  rug- 
ged parts  of  the  cotton  belt  and  in  the  tobacco  zone  as  well,  the 
same  tendency  toward  the  engrossment  of  estates  prevailed, 
though  in  milder  degree  and  with  lesser  effects. 

This  widespread  phenomenon  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  con- 
temporaries. Two  members  of  the  South  Carolina  legislature 
described  it  as  early  as  1805  in  substance  as  follows :  "As  one 
man  grows  wealthy  and  thereby  increases  his  stock  of  negroes, 
he  wants  more  land  to  employ  them  on ;  and  being  fully  able,  he 
bids  a  large  price  for  his  less  opulent  neighbor's  plantation,  who 
by  selling  advantageously  here  can  raise  money  enough  to  go  into 
the  back  country,  where  he  can  be  more  on  a  level  with  the  most 
forehanded,  can  get  lands  cheaper,  and  speculate  or  grow  rich 
by  industry  as  he  pleases."  *  Some  three  decades  afterward 
another  South  Carolinian  spoke  sadly  "on  the  incompatible- 
ness  of  large  plantations  with  neighboring  farms,  and  their 
uniform  tendency  to  destroy  the  yeoman."  ^  Similarly  Dr.  Basil 
Manly,^  president  of  the  University  of  Alabama,  spoke  in  1841  of 
the  inveterate  habit  of  Southern  farmers  to  buy  more  land  and 
slaves  and  plod  on  captive  to  the  customs  of  their  ancestors ; 
and  C.  C.  Clay,  Senator  from  Alabama,  said  in  1855  of  his  na- 
tive county  of  Madison,  which  lay  on  the  Tennessee  border :  "I 
can  show  you  .  .  .  the  sad  memorials  of  the  artless  and  exhaust- 
ing culture  of  cotton.  Our  small  planters,  after  taking  the  cream 
off  their  lands,  unable  to  restore  them  by  rest,  manures  or  other- 
wise, are  going  further  west  and  south  in  search  of  other  virgin 
lands  which  they  may  and  will  despoil  and  impoverish  in  like 
manner.  Our  wealthier  planters,  with  greater  means  and  no 
more  skill,  are  buying  out  their  poorer  neighbors,  extending  their 
plantations  and  adding  to  their  slave  force.  The  wealthy  few, 
who  are  able  to  live  on  smaller  profits  and  to  give  their  blasted 

*  "Diary  of  Edward  Hooker,"  in  the  American  Historical  Association 
Report  for  1896,  p.  878. 

"Quoted  in  Francis  Lieber,  Slavery,  Plantations  and  the  Yeomanry 
(Loyal  Publication  Society,  no.  29,  New  York,  1863),  p.  5. 

'  Tuscaloosa  Monitor,  April  13,  1842. 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  335 

fields  some  rest,  are  thus  pushing  off  the  many  who  are  merely 
independent.  ...  In  traversing  that  county  one  will  discover 
numerous  farm  houses,  once  the  abode  of  industrious  and  intelli- 
gent freemen,  now  occupied  by  slaves,  or  tenantless,  deserted 
and  dilapidated ;  he  will  observe  fields,  once  fertile,  now  unfenced, 
abandoned,  and  covered  with  those  evil  harbingers  fox-tail  and 
broomsedge ;  he  will  see  the  moss  growing  on  the  mouldering 
walls  of  once  thrifty  villages;  and  will  find  'one  only  master 
grasps  the  whole  domain'  that  once  furnished  happy  homes  for  a 
dozen  white  families.  Indeed,  a  country  in  its  infancy,  where 
fifty  years  ago  scarce  a  forest  tree  had  been  felled  by  the  axe  of 
the  pioneer,  is  already  exhibiting  the  painful  signs  of  senility  and 
decay  apparent  in  Virginia  and  the  Carolinas;  the  freshness  of 
its  agricultural  glory  is  gone,  the  vigor  of  its  youth  is  extinct, 
and  the  spirit  of  desolation  seems  brooding  over  it."  ' 

The  census  returns  for  Madison  County  show  that  in  1830 
when  the  gross  population  was  at  its  maximum  the  whites  and 
slaves  were  equally  numerous,  and  that  by  i860  while  the  whites 
had  diminished  by  a  fourth  the  slaves  had  increased  only  by  a 
twentieth.  This  suggests  that  the  farmers  were  drawn,  not 
driven,  away. 

The  same  trend  may  be  better  studied  in  the  uplands  of  east- 
ern Georgia  where  earlier  settlements  gave  a  longer  experience 
and  where  fuller  statistics  permit  a  more  adequate  analysis.  In 
the  county  of  Oglethorpe,  typical  of  that  area,  the  whites  in  the 
year  1800  were  more  than  twice  as  many  as  the  slaves,  the  non- 
slaveholding  families  were  to  the  slaveholders  in  the  ratio  of  8 
to  5,  and  slaveholders  on  the  average  had  but  5  slaves  each.  In 
1820  the  county  attained  its  maximum  population  for  the  ante- 
bellum period,  and  competition  between  the  industrial  types  was 
already  exerting  its  full  effect.  The  whites  were  of  the  same 
number  as  twenty  years  before,  but  the  slaves  now  exceeded 
them;  the  slaveholding  families  also  slightly  exceeded  those  who 
had  none,  and  the  scale  of  the  average  slaveholding  had  risen  to 
8.5.  Then  in  the  following  forty  years  while  the  whites  dimin- 
ished and  the  number  of  slaves  remained  virtually  constant,  the 

*  DeBoii/s  Review,  XIX,  727. 


S36  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

scale  of  the  average  slaveholding  rose  to  12.2;  the  number  of 
slaveholders  shrank  by  a  third  and  the  non-slaveholders  by  tv^o 
thirds.*  The  smaller  slaveholders,  those  we  v^ill  say  with  less 
than  ten  slaves  each,  ought  of  course  to  be  classed  among  the 
farmers.  When  this  is  done  the  farmers  of  Oglethorpe  appear 
to  have  been  twice  as  many  as  the  planters  even  in  i860.  But 
this  is  properly  offset  by  rating  the  average  plantation  there  at 
four  or  five  times  the  industrial  scale  of  the  average  farm,  which 
makes  it  clear  that  the  plantation  regime  had  grown  dominant. 

In  such  a  district  virtually  everyone  was  growing  cotton  to  the 
top  of  his  ability.  When  the  price  of  the  staple  was  high,  both 
planters  and  farmers  prospered  in  proportion  to  their  scales. 
Those  whose  earnings  were  greatest  would  be  eager  to  enlarge 
their  fields,  and  would  make  offers  for  adjoining  lands  too  tempt- 
ing for  some  farmers  to  withstand.  These  would  sell  out  and 
move  west  to  resume  cotton  culture  to  better  advantage  than  be- 
fore. When  cotton  prices  were  low,  however,  the  farmers,  feel- 
ing the  stress  most  keenly,  would  be  inclined  to  forsake  staple 
production.  But  in  such  case  there  was  no  occasion  for  them 
to  continue  cultivating  lands  best  fit  for  cotton.  The  obvious 
policy  would  be  to  sell  their  homesteads  to  neighboring  planters 
and  move  to  cheaper  fields  beyond  the  range  of  planters'  compe- 
tition. Thus  the  farmers  were  constantly  pioneering  in  districts 
of  all  sorts,  while  the  plantation  regime,  whether  by  the  pros- 
perity and  enlargement  of  the  farms  or  by  the  immigration  of 
planters,  or  both,  was  constantly  replacing  the  farming  scale  in 
most  of  the  staple  areas. 

In  the  oldest  districts  of  all,  however,  the  lowlands  about  the 
Chesapeake,  the  process  went  on  to  a  final  stage  in  which  the  bulk 
of  the  planters,  after  exhausting  the  soil  for  staple  purposes,  de- 
parted westward  and  were  succeeded  in  their  turn  by  farmers, 
partly  native  whites  and  free  negroes  and  partly  Northerners 
trickling  in,  who  raised  melons,  peanuts,  potatoes,  and  garden 
truck  for  the  Northern  city  markets. 

Throughout  the  Southern  staple  areas  the  plantations  waxed 

U.  B.  Phillips,  "The  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Southern  Black  Belts," 
in  the  American  Historical  Review,  XI,  810-813  (July,  1906). 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  337 

and  waned  in  a  territorial  progression.  The  regime  was  a  broad 
billow  moving  irresistibly  westward  and  leaving  a  trough  be- 
hind. At  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  was  entering 
Texas,  its  last  available  province,  whose  cotton  area  it  would  have 
duly  filled  had  its  career  escaped  its  catastrophic  interruption. 
What  would  have  occurred  after  that  completion,  without  the 
war,  it  is  interesting  to  surmise.  Probably  the  crest  of  the  bil- 
low would  have  subsided  through  the  effect  of  an  undertow  set- 
ting eastward  again.  Belated  immigrants,  finding  the  good  lands 
all  engrossed,  would  have  returned  to  their  earlier  homes,  to  hold 
their  partially  exhausted  soils  in  higher  esteem  than  before  and 
to  remedy  the  depletion  by  reformed  cultivation.  That  the  bil- 
low did  not  earlier  give  place  to  a  level  flood  was  partly  due  to 
the  shortage  of  slaves ;  for  the  African  trade  was  closed  too  soon 
for  the  stock  to  fill  the  country  in  these  decades.  To  the  same 
shortage  was  owing  such  opportunity  as  the  white  yeomanry  had 
in  staple  production.  The  world  offered  a  market,  though  not  at 
high  prices,  for  a  greater  volume  of  the  crops  than  the  plantation 
slaves  could  furnish;  the  farmers  supplied  the  deficit. 

Free  workingmen  in  general,  whether  farmers,  artisans  or  un- 
skilled wage  earners,  merely  filled  the  interstices  in  and  about  the 
slave  plantations.  One  year  in  the  eighteen-forties  a  planter  near 
New  Orleans,  attempting  to  dispense  with  slave  labor,  assembled 
a  force  of  about  a  hundred  Irish  and  German  immigrants  for  his 
crop  routine.  Things  went  smoothly  until  the  midst  of  the 
grinding  season,  when  with  one  accord  the  gang  struck  for  double 
pay.  Rejecting  the  demand  the  planter  was  unable  to  proceed 
with  his  harvest  and  lost  some  ten  thousand  dollars  worth  of  his 
crop.^  The  generality  of  the  planters  realized,  without  such  a 
demonstration,  that  each  year  must  bring  its  crop  crisis  during 
which  an  overindulgence  by  the  laborers  in  the  privileges  of  lib- 
erty might  bring  ruin  to  the  employers.  To  secure  immunity 
from  this  they  were  the  more  fully  reconciled  to  the  limitations 
of  their  peculiar  labor  supply.  Freemen  white  or  black  might  be 
convenient  as  auxiliaries,  and  were  indeed  employed  in  many  in- 

'  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Second  Visit  to  the  United  States,  2d  ed.  (London, 
1850),  II,  162,  163. 


338  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

stances  whether  on  annual  contract  as  blacksmiths  and  the  like  or 
temporarily  as  emergency  helpers  in  the  fields;  but  negro  slaves 
were  the  standard  composition  of  the  gangs.  This  brought  it 
about  that  whithersoever  the  planters  went  they  carried  with 
them  crowds  of  negro  slaves  and  all  the  problems  and  influences 
to  which  the  presence  of  negroes  and  the  prevalence  of  slavery 
gave  rise. 

One  of  the  consequences  was  to  keep  foreign  immigration 
small.  In  the  colonial  period  the  trade  in  indentured  servants 
recruited  the  white  population,  and  most  of  those  who  came  in 
that  status  remained  as  permanent  citizens  of  the  South ;  but  such 
Europeans  as  came  during  the  nineteenth  century  were  free  to 
follow  their  own  reactions  without  submitting  to  a  compulsory 
adjustment.  Many  of  them  found  the  wage-earning  opportunity 
scant,  for  the  slaves  were  given  preference  by  their  masters  when 
steady  occupations  were  to  be  filled,  and  odd  jobs  were  often  the 
only  recourse  for  outsiders.  This  was  an  effect  of  the  slavery 
system.  Still  more  important,  however,  was  the  repugnance  which 
the  newcomers  felt  at  working  and  living  alongside  the  blacks; 
and  this  was  a  consequence  not  of  the  negroes  being  slaves  so 
much  as  of  the  slaves  being  negroes.  It  was  a  racial  antipathy 
which  when  added  to  the  experience  of  industrial  disadvantage 
pressed  the  bulk  of  the  newcomers  northwestward  beyond  the 
confines  of  the  Southern  staple  belts,  and  pressed  even  many  of 
the  native  whites  in  the  same  direction. 

This  intrenched  the  slave  plantations  yet  more  strongly  in  their 
local  domination,  and  by  that  very  fact  it  hampered  industrial 
development.  Great  landed  proprietors,  it  is  true,  have  often- 
times been  essential  for  making  beneficial  innovations.  Thus  the 
remodeling  of  English  agriculture  which  Jethro  Tull  and  Lord 
Townsend  instituted  in  the  eighteenth  century  could  not  have  been 
set  in  progress  by  any  who  did  not  possess  their  combination  of 
talent  and  capital"  In  the  ante-bellum  South,  likewise,  it  was 
the  planters,  and  necessarily  so,  who  introduced  the  new  staples 
of  sea-island  cotton  and  sugar,  the  new  devices  of  horizontal 

^'R.  E.  Prothero,  English  Farming,  past  and  present  (London,  1912), 
chap.  7. 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  339 

plowing  and  hillside  terracing,  the  new  practice  of  seed  selec- 
tion, and  the  new  resource  of  commercial  fertilizers.  Yet  their 
constant  bondage  to  the  staples  debarred  the  whole  community 
in  large  degree  from  agricultural  diversification,  and  their  de- 
pendence upon  gangs  of  negro  slaves  kept  the  average  of  skill  and 
assiduity  at  a  low  level. 

The  negroes  furnished  inertly  obeying  minds  and  muscles; 
slavery  provided  a  police ;  and  the  plantation  system  contributed 
the  machinery  of  direction.  The  assignment  of  special  functions 
to  slaves  of  special  aptitudes  would  enhance  the  general  efficiency  ; 
the  coordination  of  tasks  would  prevent  waste  of  effort;  and  the 
conduct  of  a  steady  routine  would  lessen  the  mischiefs  of  irre- 
sponsibility. But  in  the  work  of  a  plantation  squad  no  delicate 
implements  could  be  employed,  for  they  would  be  broken;  and 
no  discriminating  care  in  the  handling  of  crops  could  be  had  ex- 
cept at  a  cost  of  supervision  which  was  generally  prohibitive. 
The  whole  establishment  would  work  with  success  only  when  the 
management  fully  recognized  and  allowed  for  the  crudity  of  the 
labor. 

The  planters  faced  this  fact  with  mingled  resolution  and  resig- 
nation. The  sluggishness  of  the  bulk  of  their  slaves  they  took  as 
a  racial  trait  to  be  conquered  by  discipline,  even  though  their  in- 
eptitude was  not  to  be  eradicated;  the  talents  and  vigor  of  their 
exceptional  negroes  and  mulattoes,  on  the  other  hand,  they  sought 
to  foster  by  special  training  and  rewards.  But  the  prevalence 
of  slavery  which  aided  them  in  the  one  policy  hampered  them  in 
the  other,  for  it  made  the  rewards  arbitrary  instead  of  automatic 
and  it  restricted  the  scope  of  the  laborers'  employments  and  of 
their  ambitions  as  well.  The  device  of  hiring  slaves  to  them- 
selves, which  had  an  invigorating  effect  here  and  there  in  the 
towns,  could  find  little  application  in  the  country;  and  the  pater- 
nalism of  the  planters  could  provide  no  fully  effective  substitute. 
Hence  the  achievements  of  the  exceptional  workmen  were  lim- 
ited by  the  status  of  slavery  as  surely  as  the  progress  of  the  gen- 
erality was  restricted  by  the  fact  of  their  being  negroes. 

A  further  influence  of  the  plantation  system  was  to  hamper 
the  growth  of  towns.    This  worked  in  several  ways.    As  for 


340  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

manufactures,  the  chronic  demand  of  the  planters  for  means 
with  which  to  enlarge  their  scales  of  operations  absorbed  most  of 
the  capital  which  might  otherwise  have  been  available  for  factory 
promotion.  A  few  cotton  mills  were  built  in  the  Piedmont  where 
water  power  was  abundant,  and  a  few  small  ironworks  and  other 
industries;  but  the  supremacy  of  agriculture  was  nowhere  chal- 
lenged. As  for  commerce,  the  planters  plied  the  bulk  of  their 
trade  with  distant  wholesale  dealers,  patronizing  the  local  shop- 
keepers only  for  petty  articles  or  in  emergencies  when  transport 
could  not  be  awaited ;  and  the  slaves  for  their  part,  while  willing 
enough  to  buy  of  any  merchant  within  reach,  rarely  had  either 
money  or  credit. 

Towns  grew,  of  course,  at  points  on  the  seaboard  where  har- 
bors were  good,  and  where  rivers  or  railways  brought  commerce 
from  the  interior.  Others  rose  where  the  fall  line  marked  the 
heads  of  river  navigation,  and  on  the  occasional  blufifs  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  finally  a  few  more  at  railroad  junctions.  All  of 
these  together  numbered  barely  three  score,  some  of  which 
counted  their  population  by  hundreds  rather  than  by  thousands ; 
and  in  the  wide  intervals  between  there  was  nothing  but  farms, 
plantations  and  thinly  scattered  villages.  In  the  Piedmont, 
country  towns  of  fairly  respectable  dimensions  rose  here  and 
there,  though  many  a  Southern  county-seat  could  boast  little  more 
than  a  court  house  and  a  hitching  rack.  Even  as  regards  the 
seaports,  the  currents  of  trade  were  too  thin  and  divergent  to 
permit  of  large  urban  concentration,  for  the  Appalachian  water- 
shed shut  off  the  Atlantic  ports  from  the  commerce  of  the  cen- 
tral basin ;  and  even  the  ambitious  construction  of  railroads  to  the 
northwest,  fostered  by  the  seaboard  cities,  merely  enabled  the 
Piedmont  planters  to  get  their  provisions  overland,  and  barely 
affected  the  volume  of  the  seaboard  trade.  New  Orleans  alone 
had  a  location  promising  commercial  greatness ;  but  her  prospects 
were  heavily  diminished  by  the  building  of  the  far  away  Erie 
Canal  and  the  Northern  trunk  line  railroads  which  diverted  the 
bulk  of  Northwestern  trade  from  the  Gulf  outlet. 

As  conditions  were,  the  slaveholding  South  could  have  real- 
ized a  metropolitan  life  only  through  absentee  proprietorships. 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  341 

In  the  Roman  latifundia,  which  overspread  central  and  southern 
Italy  after  the  Hannibalic  war,  absenteeism  was  a  chronic  fea- 
ture and  a  curse.  The  overseers  there  were  commonly  not  help- 
ers in  the  proprietors'  daily  routine,  but  sole  managers  charged 
with  a  paramount  duty  of  procuring  the  greatest  possible  reve- 
nues and  transmitting  them  to  meet  the  urban  expenditures  of 
their  patrician  employers.  The  owners,  having  no  more  per- 
sonal touch  with  their  great  gangs  of  slaves  than  modern  stock- 
holders have  with  the  operatives  in  their  mills,  exploited  them 
accordingly.  Where  humanity  and  profits  were  incompatible, 
business  considerations  were  likely  to  prevail.  Illustrations  of 
the  policy  may  be  drawn  from  Cato  the  Elder's  treatise  on  agricul- 
ture. Heavy  work  by  day,  he  reasoned,  would  not  only  increase 
the  crops  but  would  cause  deep  slumber  by  night,  valuable  as  a 
safeguard  against  conspiracy ;  discord  was  to  be  sown  instead 
of  harmony  among  the  slaves,  for  the  same  purpose  of  hindering 
plots ;  capital  sentences  when  imposed  by  law  were  to  be  admin- 
istered in  the  presence  of  the  whole  corps  for  the  sake  of  their 
terrorizing  effect;  while  rations  for  the  able-bodied  were  not  to 
exceed  a  fixed  rate,  those  for  the  sick  were  to  be  still  more  fru- 
gally stinted ;  and  the  old  and  sick  slaves  were  to  be  sold  along 
with  other  superfluities.^^  Now,  Cato  was  a  moralist  of  wide 
repute,  a  stoic  it  is  true,  but  even  so  a  man  who  had  a  strong 
sense  of  duty.  If  such  were  his  maxims,  the  oppressions  inflicted 
by  his  fellow  proprietors  and  their  slave  drivers  must  have  been 
stringent  indeed. 

The  heartlessness  of  the  Roman  latifundimn  was  the  product 
partly  of  their  absenteeism,  partly  of  the  cheapness  of  their 
slaves  which  were  poured  into  the  markets  by  conquests  and  raids 
in  all  quarters  of  the  Mediterranean  world,  and  partly  of  the 
lack  of  difference  between  masters  and  slaves  in  racial  traits.  In 
the  ante-bellum  South  all  these  conditions  were  reversed :  the 
planters  were  commonly  resident ;  the  slaves  were  costly ;  and  the 
slaves  were  negroes,  who  for  the  most  part  were  by  racial  qual- 

"  A.  H.  J.  Greenidge,  History  of  Rome  during  the  later  Republic  and 
the  early  Principate  (New  York,  1905),  I,  64-85;  M.  Porcius  Cato,  De 
Agri  Cultura,  Keil  ed.  (Leipsig,  1882). 


342  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

ity  submissive  rather  than  defiant,  light-hearted  instead  of 
gloomy,  amiable  and  ingratiating  instead  of  sullen,  and  whose 
very  defects  invited  paternalism  rather  than  repression.  Many  a 
city  slave  in  Rome  was  the  boon  companion  of  his  master,  shar- 
ing his  intellectual  pleasures  and  his  revels,  while  most  of  those 
on  the  latifundia  were  driven  cattle.  It  was  hard  to  maintain  a 
middle  adjustment  for  them.  In  the  South,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  medium  course  was  the  obvious  thing.  iThe  bulk  of  the 
slaves,  because  they  were  negroes,  because  they  were  costly,  and 
because  they  were  in  personal  touch,  were  pupils  and  working 
wards,  while  the  planters  were  teachers  and  guardians  as  well  as 
masters  and  owners,  j  There  was  plenty  of  coercion  in  the  South ; 
but  in  comparison  with  the  harshness  of  the  Roman  system  the 
American  regime  was  essentially  mild. 

Every  plantation  of  the  standard  Southern  type  was,  in  fact, 
a  school  constantly  training  and  controlling  pupils  who  were  in  a 
backward  state  of  civilization.  Slave  youths  of  special  prom- 
ise, or  when  special  purposes  were  in  view,  might  be  bound  as 
apprentices  to  craftsmen  at  a  distance.  Thus  James  H.  Ham- 
mond in  1859  apprenticed  a  fourteen-year-old  mulatto  boy,  named 
Henderson,  for  four  years  to  Charles  Axt,  of  Crawfordville, 
Georgia,  that  he  might  be  taught  vine  culture.  Axt  agreed  in  the 
indenture  to  feed  and  clothe  the  boy,  pay  for  any  necessary  med- 
ical attention,  teach  him  his  trade,  and  treat  him  with  proper 
kindness.  Before  six  months  were  ended  Alexander  H.  Ste- 
phens, who  was  a  neighbor  of  Axt  and  a  friend  of  Hammond, 
wrote  the  latter  that  Henderson  had  run  away  and  that  Axt  was 
unfit  to  have  the  care  of  slaves,  especially  when  on  hire,  and  ad- 
vised Hammond  to  take  the  boy  home.  Soon  afterward  Stephens 
reported  that  Henderson  had  returned  and  had  been  whipped, 
though  not  cruelly,  by  Axt.^^  The  further  history  of  this  epi- 
sode is  not  ascertainable.  Enough  of  it  is  on  record,  however,  to 
suggest  reasons  why  for  the  generality  of  slaves  home  training 
was  thought  best. 

This,  rudimentary  as  it  necessarily  was,  was  in  fact  just  what 
the  bulk  of  the  negroes  most  needed.     They  were  in  an  alien 

"  MSS.  among  the  Hammond  papers  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


PLANTATION  TENDENCIES  343 

land,  in  an  essentially  slow  process  of  transition  from  barbarism 
to  civilization.  New  industrial  methods  of  a  simple  sort  they 
might  learn  from  precepts  and  occasional  demonstrations ;  the 
habits  and  standards  of  civilized  life  they  could  only  acquire  in 
the  main  through  examples  reinforced  with  discipline.  These  the 
plantation  regime  supplied.  Each  white  family  served  very 
much  the  function  of  a  modern  social  settlement,  setting  patterns 
of  orderly,  well  bred  conduct  which  the  negroes  were  encouraged 
to  emulate ;  and  the  planters  furthermore  were  vested  with  a  co- 
ercive power,  salutary  in  the  premises,  of  which  settlement  work- 
ers are  deprived.  The  very  aristocratic  nature  of  the  system 
permitted  a  vigor  of  discipline  which  democracy  cannot  possess. 
On  the  whole  the  plantations  were  the  best  schools  yet  invented 
for  the  mass  training  of  that  sort  of  inert  and  backward  people 
which  the  bulk  of  the  American  negroes  represented.  The  lack 
of  any  regular  provision  for  the  discharge  of  pupils  upon  the 
completion  of  their  training  was,  of  course,  a  cardinal  shortcom- 
ing which  the  laws  of  slavery  imposed ;  but  even  in  view  of  this, 
the  slave  plantation  regime,  after  having  wrought  the  initial  and 
irreparable  misfortune  of  causing  the  negroes  to  be  imported,  did 
at  least  as  much  as  any  system  possible  in  the  period  could,  have 
done  toward  adapting  the  bulk  of  them  to  life  in  a  civilized  com- 
munity. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ECONOMIC  VIEWS  OF  SLAVERY :  A  SURVEY  OF  THE  LITERA- 
TURE 

IN  barbaric  society  slavery  is  a  normal  means  of  conquering 
the  isolation  of  workers  and  assembling  them  in  more  pro- 
ductive coordination.  Where  population  is  scant  and  money  / 
little  used  it  is  almost  a  necessity  in  the  conduct  of  large  under- 
takings, and  therefore  more  or  less  essential  for  the  advancement 
of  civilization.  It  is  a  means  of  domesticating  savage  or  bar- 
barous men,  analogous  in  kind  and  in  consequence  to  the  domes- 
/tication  of  the  beasts  of  the  field.*  It  was  even  of  advantage  to 
^Some  of  the  people  enslaved,  in  that  it  saved  them  from  exter- 
mination when  defeated  in  war,  and  in  that  it  gave  them  touch 
with  more  advanced  communities  than  their  own.  But  this  was 
counterbalanced  by  the  stimulus  which  the  profits  of  slave  catch- 
ing gave  to  wars  and  raids  with  all  their  attendant  injuries.  Any 
benefit  to  the  slave,  indeed,  was  purely  incidental.  The  reason 
for  the  institution's  existence  was  the  advantage  which  accrued 
to  the  masters.  So  positive  and  pronounced  was  this  reckoned 
to  be,  that  such  highly  enlightened  people  as  the  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans maintained  it  in  the  palmiest  days  of  their  supremacies. 

Western  Europe  in  primitive  times  was  no  exception.  Slavery 
in  a  more  or  less  fully  typical  form  was  widespread.  When  the 
migrations  ended  in  the  middle  ages,  however,  the  rise  of  feudal- 
ism gave  the  people  a  thorough  territorial  regimentation.  The 
dearth  of  commerce  whether  m  goods  or  in  men  led  gradually 
to  the  conversion  of  the  unfree  laborers  from  slaves  into  serfs 
or  villeins  attached  for  generations  to  the  lands  on  which  they 
wrought.     Finally,  the  people  multiplied  so  greatly  and  the  land- 

*  This  thought  was  expressed,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  in  T.  R.  Dew's 
essay  on  slavery  (1832)  ;  it  is  elaborated  in  Gabriel  Tarde,  The  Laws  of 
Imitation  (Parsons  tr.,  New  York,  1903),  pp.  278,  279. 

344 


ECONOMIC  VIEWS  OF  SLAVERY  345 

less  were  so  pressed  for  livelihood  that  at  the  beginning  of  mod- 
ern times  European  society  found  the  removal  of  bonds  conducive 
to  the  common  advantage.  Serfs  freed  from  their  inherited  ob- 
ligations could  now  seek  employment  wherever  they  would,  and 
landowners,  now  no  longer  lords,  might  employ  whom  they 
pleased.  Bondmen  gave  place  to  hirelings  and  peasant  proprie- 
tors, status  gave  place  to  contract,  industrial  society  was  enabled 
to  make  redistributions  and  readjustments  at  will,  as  it  had  never 
been  before.  In  view  of  the  prevailing  traits  and  the  density  of 
the  population  a  general  return  whether  to  slavery  or  serfdom 
was  economically  unthinkable.  An  intelligent  Scotch  philanthro- 
pist, Fletcher  of  Saltoun,  it  is  true,  proposed  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  that  the  indigent  and  their  children  be  bound 
as  slaves  to  selected  masters  as  a  means  of  relieving  the  terrible 
distresses  of  unemployment  in  his  times ;  ^  but  his  project  appears 
to  have  received  no  public  sanction  whatever.  The  fact  that  he 
published  such  a  plan  is  more  a  curious  antiquarian  item  than 
one  of  significance  in  the  history  of  slavery.  Not  even  the  thin 
edge  of  a  wedge  could  possibly  be  inserted  which  might  open  a 
way  to  restore  what  everyone  was  on  virtually  all  counts  glad  to 
be  free  of. 

When  the  American  mining  and  plantation  colonies  were  es' 
tablished,  however,  some  phases  of  the  most  ancient  labor  prob- 
lems recurred.  *  Natural  resources  invited  industry  in  large  units,, 
but  wage  labor  was  not  to  be  had.  "The  Spaniards  found  a  tem- 
porary solution  in  impressing  the  tropical  American  aborigines, 
and  the  English  in  a  recourse  to  indented  white  immigrants.  But 
both  soon  resorted  predominantly  for  plantation  purposes  to  the 
importation  of  Africans,  for  whom  the  ancient  institution  of 
slavery  was  revived.  Thus  from  purely  economic  considerations 
the  sophisticated  European  colonists  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  involved  themselves  and  their  descendants,  with 
the  connivance  of  their  home  governments,  in  the  toils  of  a  sys- 
tem which  on  the  one  hand  had  served  their  remote  forbears 
with  good  effect,  but  which  on  the  other  hand  civilized  peoples 

^  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  History  of  England  in  th^  Eighteenth  Century  (New 
York,  1879),  11,43,44. 


346  AMERICAN  NEGRO  SLAVERY 

had  long  and  almost  universally  discarded  as  an  incubus.  In 
these  colonial  beginnings  the  negroes  were  to  be  had  so  cheaply 
and  slavery  seemed  such  a  simple  and  advantageous  device  when 
applied  to  them,  that  no  qualms  as  to  the  future  were  felt.  At 
least  no  expressions  of  them  appear  in  the  records  of  thought  ex- 
tant for  the  first  century  and  more  of  English  colonial  experience. 
And  when  apprehensions  did  arise  they  were  concerned  with  the 
dangers  of  servile  revolt,  not  with  any  deleterious  effects  to  arise 
Jrom  the  economic  nature  of  slavery  in  time  of  peace. 

Now,  slavery  and  indented  servitude  are  analogous  to  serfdom 
in  that  they  may  yield  to  the  employers  all  the  proceeds  of  indus- 
try beyond  what  is  required  for  the  sustenance  of  the  laborers; 
but  they  have  this  difference,  immense  for  American  purposes, 
that  they  permit  labor  to  be  territorially  shifted,  while  serfdom 
keeps  it  locally  fixed.  T  By  choosing  these  facilitating  forms  of 
bondage  instead  of  the  one  which  would  have  attached  the  labor- 
ers to  the  soil,  the  founders  of  the  colonial  regime  in  industry 
doubtless  thought  they  had  avoided  all  economic  handicaps  in 
the  premises.  fTheir  device,  however,  was  calculated  to  meet  the 
needs  of  a  situation  where  the  choice  was  between  bond  labor 
and  no  labor.  As  generations  passed  and  workingmen  multi- 
"plied  in  America,  the  system  of  indentures  for  white  immigrants 
was  automatically  dissolved;  but  slavery  for  the  bulk  of  the 
negroes  persisted  as  an  integral  feature  of  economic  life. 
Whether  this  was  conducive  or  injurious  to  the  prosperity  of 
employers  and  to  the  community's  welfare  became  at  length  a 
question  to  which  students  far  and  wide  applied  their  faculties 
Some  of  the  participants  in  the  discussion  considered  the  prob- 
lem as  one  in  pure  theory ;  others  examined  not  only  the  abstract 
ratio  of  slave  and  free  labor  efficiency  but  included  in  their  view 
the  factor  of  negro  racial  traits  and  the  prospects  and  probable 
consequences  of  abolition  under  existing  circumstances.  On  the 
one  point  that  an  average  slave  might  be  expected  to  accomplish 
less  in  an  hour's  work  than  an  average  free  laborer,  agreement 
was  unanimous;  on  virtually  every  other  point  the  views  pub- 
lished were  so  divergent  as  to  leave  the  public  more  or  less  dis- 
tracted. 


ECONOMIC  VIEWS  OF  SLAVERY  347 

Adam  Smith,  whose  work  largely  shaped  the  course  of  eco- 
nomic thought  for  a  century  following  its  publication  in  1776, 
said  of  slave  labor  merely  that  its  cost  was  excessive  by  reason 
of  its  lack  of  zest,  frugality  and  inventiveness.  The  tropical 
climate  of  the  sugar  colonies,  he  conceded,  might  require  the 
labor  of  negro  slaves,  but  even  there  its  productiveness  would 
be  enhanced  by  liberal  policies  promoting  intelligence  among  the 
slaves  and  assimilating  their  condition  to  that  of  freemen.'  To 
some  of  these  points  J.  B.  Say,  the  next  economist  to  consider 
the  matter,  took  exception.  Common  sense  must  tell  us,  said 
he,  that  a  slave's  maintenance  must  be  less  than  that  of  a  free 
workman,  since  the  master  will  impose  a  more  drastic  frugality 
than  a  freeman  will  adopt  unless  a  dearth  of  earnings  requires 
it.  The  slave's  work,  furthermore,  is  more  constant,  for  the 
master  will  not  permit  so  much  leisure  and  relaxation  as  the 
freeman  customarily  enjoys.  Say  agreed,  however,  that  slavery, 
causing  violence  and  brutality  to  usurp  the  place  of  intelligence, 
both  hampered  the  progress  of  invention  and  enervated  such 
free  laborers  as  were  in  touch  with  the  regime.* 

The  translation  of  Say's  book  into  English  evoked  a  reply  to 
his  views  on  slavery  by  Adam  Hodgson,  an  Englishman  with 
anti-slavery  bent  who  had  made  an  American  tour ;  but  his  essay, 
though  fortified  with  long  quotations,  was  too  rambling  and  ill 
digested  to  influence  those  who  were  not  already  desirous  of 
being  convinced.^  More  substantial  was  an  essay  of  1827  by  a 
Marylander,  James  Raymond,  who  cited  the  experiences  of  his 
own  commonwealt